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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AtulaSiriwardane" data-source="post: 4070113" data-attributes="member: 120286">Common elements   Fake checks Fraudulent checks and money orders are key elements in many advance-fee scams, such as auction/classified listing overpayment, lottery scams, inheritance scams, etc, and can be used in almost any scam when a "payment" to the victim is required to gain, regain or further solidify the victims' trust and confidence in the validity of the scheme. The use of checks in a scam hinges on a U.S. law (and common practice in other countries) concerning checks: when an account holder presents a cheque for deposit or to cash, the bank must (or in other countries, usually) make the funds available to the account holder within 1-5 business days, regardless of how long it actually takes for the cheque to clear and funds to be transferred from the issuing bank.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-25" target="_blank">[26]</a> The cheque clearing process normally takes 7-10 days and can in fact take up to a month when dealing with foreign banks. The time between the funds appearing as available to the account holder and the cheque clearing is known as the "float", during which time the bank could technically be said to have floated a loan to the account holder to be covered with the funds from the bank clearing the cheque. The cheque given to the victim is typically counterfeit but drawn on a real account with real funds in it. With a piece of software like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickBooks" target="_blank">QuickBooks</a> and/or pre-printed blank cheque stock, using the correct banking information, the scammer can easily print a cheque that is absolutely genuine-looking, passes all counterfeit tests, and may even clear the paying account if the account information is accurate and the funds are available. However, whether it clears or not, it will eventually become apparent either to the bank or the account holder that the cheque is a forgery. This can be as little as three days after the funds are available if the bank supposedly covering the cheque discovers the cheque information is invalid, or it could take months for a business or individual to notice the fraudulent draft on their account. It has been suggested that in some cases the cheque is genuine - however the fraudster has a friend (or bribes an official) at the paying bank to claim it is a fake weeks or even months later when the physical cheque arrives back at the paying bank. Regardless of the amount of time involved, once the cashing bank is alerted that the cheque is fraudulent, the transaction is reversed and the money removed from the victim's account. In many cases, this puts victims in debt to their banks as the victim has usually sent a large portion of the cheque by some non-reversible 'wire transfer' means (typically Western Union) to the scammer and, since more uncollected funds have been sent than funds otherwise present in the victim's account, an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdraft" target="_blank">overdraft</a> results.   Wire transfer A central element of advance-fee fraud is that the transaction from the victim to the scammer must be untraceable and irreversible. Otherwise, the victim, once they become aware of the scam, can successfully retrieve their money and/or alert officials who can track the accounts used by the scammer. Wire transfers via <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Union" target="_blank">Western Union</a> are ideal for this purpose. The wire transfer, if sent internationally, cannot be cancelled or reversed, and the person receiving the money cannot be tracked. In fact, that person often does not have to provide identification; they only have to know the identifiers of the transaction such as the control number and secret question. Thus, the overwhelming majority of scams involve making payment via wire transfer. Other similar uncancellable forms of payment include postal money orders and cashier's cheques, but as wire transfer is the fastest method, it is the most common. In many cases Western Union will not take any action against potential fraud and will not advise the police that a fraud has been committed or assist with out a court order. They claim there is no action they can take, and will not attempt anything to resolve this issue, including contacting the authorities in the country the money was sent to.   Anonymous communication Since the scammer's operations must be untraceable to avoid identification, and because the scammer is often impersonating someone else, any communication between the scammer and his victim must be done though channels that hide the scammer's true identity. The following options in particular are widely used.  Web-based e-mail Because many free e-mail services do not require valid identifying information, and also allow communication with many victims in a short span of time, they are the preferred method of communication for scammers. Some services, unfortunately, go so far as to mask the sender's source IP address, making the scammer completely untraceable even to country of origin. Scammers can create as many accounts as they wish and often have several active at one time. In addition, if email providers are alerted to the scammer's activities and suspend the account, it is a trivial matter for the scammer to simply create a new account to begin scamming.   E-mail hijacking/friend scams Some fraudsters hijack existing e-mail accounts and use them for advance-fee fraud purposes. The fraudsters e-mail associates, friends, and/or family members of the legitimate account owner in an attempt to defraud them.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-26" target="_blank">[27]</a> This ruse generally requires the use of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing" target="_blank">phishing</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keylogger" target="_blank">keylogger</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_viruses" target="_blank">computer viruses</a> to gain login information for the e-mail address.   Fax transmissions <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax" target="_blank">Facsimile machines</a> are commonly used tools of business, whenever a client requires a hard copy of a document. They can also be simulated using web services, and made untraceable by the use of prepaid phones connected to mobile fax machines or by use of a public fax machine such as one owned by a document processing business like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinko%27s" target="_blank">Kinko's</a>. Thus, scammers posing as business entities often use fax transmissions as an anonymous form of communication. This is more expensive, as the prepaid phone and fax equipment will cost more than a free e-mail service, but the end result to a skeptical victim can be more believable and thus make faxes worth the added cost.  Telecommunications relay services Many scams use telephone calls to convince the victim that the person on the other end of the deal is a real person and telling the truth. The scammer, possibly impersonating a U.S. citizen or other person of a nationality - or even gender - other than his or her own, would arouse suspicion by placing an ordinary voice call to the victim. In these cases, scammers use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Relay_Service" target="_blank">TRS</a>, a US federally-funded relay service where an operator or a text/speech translation program acts as an intermediary between someone using an ordinary telephone and a deaf caller using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_device_for_the_deaf" target="_blank">TDD</a> or other TeleType device. The scammer might specify they are deaf or not, and that their use of a phone requires the use of a relay service. The victim, possibly drawn in by a sense of sympathy for the caller in light of a stated disability, might be more inclined to agree to the fraudulent arrangement. Because of current FCC regulations and confidentiality laws, operators are required to relay every call verbatim and must adhere to a strict code of confidentiality and ethics. Thus no relay operator is permitted to make judgements about the legality and/or legitimacy of any relay call and must relay the call without interference. As such, the relay operator cannot warn victims even when they suspect that the call is a scam; some sources claim that up to half of all IP Relay calls are scams.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-27" target="_blank">[28]</a> Due to the relative ease at tracking phone-based relay services, scammers have a tendency to use Internet Protocol-based relay services such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Relay" target="_blank">IP Relay</a> to place these calls. A common strategy consists of binding their overseas IP address to a router or server located on US soil, thus allowing them to use US-based relay service providers without interference. TRS is sometimes used to relay credit card information for the purposes of making a fraudulent purchase with a stolen credit card. In many cases however, it is simply a means for the scammer to further lure the victim into the scam.   Fake websites Though 419 scams are often perpetrated by e-mail alone, some scammers enhance the believability of their offer through the use of a sham website. Such websites can imitate real sites such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay" target="_blank">eBay</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal" target="_blank">PayPal</a>, or a banking site like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_America" target="_blank">Bank of America</a> for the purposes of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing" target="_blank">phishing</a>, while others are totally fictional and used to lend credibility to a scammer's story. Though <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing" target="_blank">phishing</a> is only a secondary interest of most scam operations, as the object of the scammer is to deceive the victim into sending the money through legitimate means, the use of websites for advance-fee fraud is common. For instance, a scammer may create a website for a fictional bank, then give the victim details to login to the site, where the victim then sees the money that the scammer has promised sitting in the account. The victim is then more likely to believe the scammer and send the requested advance payments. Fake (or hijacked) websites are the centerpiece of false online storefront scams. Another twist on scamming is where links are provided to real news sites covering events the scammer says are relevant to the transaction they propose. For instance, a scammer may use news of the death of a prominent government official as a backstory for a scam involving getting millions of dollars of the slain official's money out of the country. These are real websites covering legitimate news, but the scammer is usually not connected in any way with the events reported, and is simply using the story to gain the victim's sympathy.   Invitation to visit the country Sometimes, victims are invited to a country to meet real or fake government officials. Some victims who do travel are instead held for ransom. In some rumored cases, they are smuggled into the country without a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_%28document%29" target="_blank">visa</a> and then threatened into giving up more money as the penalties for being in a foreign country without a visa may be severe.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-StateDeptPaper-28" target="_blank">[29]</a> Sometimes victims are ransomed or killed.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-News24murder-29" target="_blank">[30]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-30" target="_blank">[31]</a>   Followup Scamming Scammers recognise that their victim who has just been scammed is more likely to fall for scamming attempts than a random person. Often after a scam the victim is contacted again by the scammer, representing himself as a law enforcement officer. The victim is informed that a group of criminals has been arrested and that they have recovered his money. To get the money back, the victim first has to pay a fee for processing or insurance purposes. Even after the victim has realised that he has been scammed, this followup scam can be successful as the scammer represents himself as a totally different party yet knows details about the transactions. The realization that he has lost a large sum of money and the chance he might get it back often leads to the victim transferring even more money to the same scammer.   Variants There are many variations on the most common stories, and also many variations on the way the scam works. The following are notable deviations from the standard Nigerian Letter scam, but still retain the core elements; the victim is deceived by some disproportionately large gain into sending an advance payment, which once made is irrecoverable.  Purchasing goods and services An increasing number of advance-fee fraud is for the con scammer to answer an ad for products and services. The scammers will offer to send a bank draft to cover the cost of the item for sale or the service. The bank draft arrives with a large surplus, the victim is asked to cash the check and Western Union the surplus. Suppliers of services can be out of pockets for tens of thousands of dollars and sellers of products are stuck with the product and a large amount of money they lost in transferring funds via Western Union. Always ask for a phone number and make sure you contact the purchaser of services by phone to verify their identity; that's the one Achilles heels the scammers have - they have to remain anonymous. Cheque cashing Some schemes are based solely on conning the victim into cashing counterfeit cheques. The scammer will contact the victim to interest them in a "work-at-home" opportunity, or asking them to cash a cheque or money order that for some reason cannot be redeemed locally. A recently-used cover story is that the perpetrator of the scam wishes the victim to work as a "mystery shopper", evaluating the service provided by MoneyGram or Western Union locations within major retailers such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal-Mart" target="_blank">Wal-Mart</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-31" target="_blank">[32]</a> The scammer sends the victim a cheque or money order, the victim cashes it, sends the cash to the scammer via wire transfer, and the scammer disappears. Later the forgery is discovered and the bank transaction is reversed, leaving the victim liable for the balance. Schemes based solely on cheque cashing will usually offer only a small part of the cheque's total amount, with the assurance that many more cheques will follow; if the victim buys in to the scam and cashes all the cheques, the scammer can win big in a very short period of time. Other scams such as overpayment usually result in smaller revenues for the scammer, but have a higher success rate as the scammer's request seems more believable. Some cheque-cashing scammers use multiple victims at multiple stages of the scam. A victim in the U.S. or other "safe" country such as the UK or Canada (often the country in which the cashing victim resides) is sometimes approached with an offer to fill out cheques sent to them by the scammer and mail them to other victims who will cash the cheque and wire the money to the scammer. The cheque mailer is usually promised a cut of the money from the scammer; this usually never occurs, and in fact the cheque mailer is often conned into paying for the production and shipping costs of the cheques. The cheque information has either been stolen or fictionalized and the cheques forged. The victim mailing the cheque is usually far easier to track (and prosecute) than the scammer, so when the cheques turn up as fraudulent, the one mailing them usually ends up not only facing federal bank fraud and conspiracy charges, but liability for the full amount of the fraudulent cheques. Because the cheque mailer is taking the fall, the scammer is even less likely to be caught, which makes it a popular variation of the scam for scammers in nations with tougher anti-fraud laws. A variation of the cheque-cashing scheme involves owners of vacation rentals. The scammer will express interest in renting the unit for a much higher than normal rate, usually for an upcoming honeymoon, business trip, etc. The scammer also offers to pay all fees "up front" as soon as the unsuspecting unit owner agrees to the windfall rental. Eventually a very official looking money order/cashier's cheque arrives. About this time the scammer requests that a portion of the rental fee be returned for some compelling reason...wedding called off, death in the family, business failure, etc. Due to the supposed crises, it is requested that most of the rental fee be returned via wire transfer. The unit owner in encouraged to retain "a fair amount" to compensate him for his time. The wire transfer is sent, only to find out later that the official looking cheque was indeed fake and the entire amount is charged back to the unit owner by his bank.</blockquote>

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