Sellers beware! I GOT SCAMMED !!

KingCarom

AzB Silver Member
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I was contacted by a person interested in buying cues, saying he saw my cues advertising on this site. Well he wanted to buy 5k in cues. He didnt sound too educated in cues, and didnt sound for real.... so I thought "I'll beleive it when I see the money"

Low and behold, a week later I received a Bank of America cashiers check for 12.5k. He instructed me that he wanted me to send the reamainder of the money to his "shipper" in the UK, and I could keep the rest for the cues he wanted.

I deposit this authentic looking cashiers check into my account and asked the teller when I would know for sure that the funds were legit. He said over night. I waited for 2 days, money was still there, so I sent the remained to his "Shipper" just like he wanted.

I waited two more days before getting ready to send the cues to him in Germany. I go to withdraw 100.00 from the account I deposited the money into and it was all gone. Apparently the check was a perfectly printed fraudulent cashiers check. It even went through the bank scanners when I deposited it.

Beware fellow cue salesman. If you experience a similar situation, be wary. If you receive a cashiers check for a cue, let it sit for several days. Bank of America could not tell that their OWN CASHIERS CHECK was fraud for 5 business days.

I am not trying to bash the bank here, we are still talking about what will happen and liability.

This message is to warn any of you who may be dealing with this guy, because he contacted me through this site.

BE CAREFUL!!!!
 
By the way, if the guy who did this to me reads this.... Pack your bags for hell buddy, cause that is where you are going if I ever find you.
 
There was a story about this on TV the other day. A man listed a truck for sale on Ebay for around $3900 and he received a cashier's check for around $7500 with the same story of sending the difference to the buyer.

Luckily the Bank caught the check. But they showed all sorts of checks on TV that were impossible to tell from the real ones.

This was in Florida where I found out there are all kinds of scams like this going on so the banks are very cautious. When I first moved here the bank said they will not release funds in my account until the deposits clear - at least two weeks.

I would be especially wary of checks that were in excess of the amount of the item. They don't want the item - they want the cash.

The offenders in this case are based in South Africa.

Jake
 
They tried that on me on ebay. Sent emails asking if they could do a similar thing........sent from a dummy yahoo account. Yahoo said not much they can do about it.
 
are you saying you deposited the money,,,and it was ok as in the check didn't look like a forgery,,,but you didn't wait until the money was in your account.
 
I deposited the Cashiers check, and explicitly asked the teller when I could be sure that the funds would be available to me. He stated that my only risk was if a stop-payment had been issued on the cashiers check. I was told that after the processing occurred that night if there was no stop payment, I would be fine and the funds good.

Bear in mind this is a cashiers check, similar to a money order. The funds are usually immeadiately available. In this case, this forged check was so good it even passed through their U shaped scanner on the counter and was obviously not rejected by their systems.

Here is the definition of Cashiers check taken from the BOA website:
Cashier's check
A check drawn on and issued by a bank. It does not usually bounce because its face amount is paid to the bank when it is issued and the bank then assumes the obligation.

Of course the check I received was forged.
 
The scam someone from Asia tried on me was.............He wanted to buy 3 Schon STL-1's.......But all he had was a Cashiers Check or Money Order ( forgot which )........And it was made out for like 4,500 more than the cost of the cues. So he wanted to send me the check, and then send me him the difference. As they say....if it sounds too good.....then it is. Why would this person trust me to send him the 4,500 extra? Why can't he cash this so called money he has, and just buy what he wants? etc etc........ How could you even consider doing this?
 
sh!t,,,,that's rough. i wonder if your bank is "nice" enough to take some responsibility. they "cleared it" afterall. you wouldn't have taken the transaction anywhere had it not been for the bank's ok.
 
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If the bank cleared it then they are responsible IF IT IS ME! THEY WOULD EAT THAT.....NOT ME. Is that what happened? The bank cleared it? Then said it wasn't good?
 
The counterfit check was created perfectly. Watermarks, Magnetic ink that scanned through the U scanner, etc...everything passed the banks security measures.

The banks current statement is that I am responsible for anything I deposit into my account. I am still waiting to see what happens, I told them I got in contact with the scammer through this site, so I am not going to say much yet, as they could be monitoring this forum.

I agree PTM, I am not going to pay the balance off no way no how since it took them 5 days to find out their own check was Fraudulent. Piss poor business practices IMO. They didnt even bother to call me, & I almost shipped the cues which would have increased my losses.


I considered doing this because I #1 didnt think he would ever send a check like that, and #2 once I received the check, if the money was good, who cares. I thought sure I will send him the extra money, he had an excellent, credible sounding story.

Hindsight is always 20/20.


My only goal by posting this is to hopefully help people avoid this scam. I am a college grad, and have alot of street smarts, and dotn get taken easily on anything. But this got me, is was that good.

Check out this sitewww.scamvictimsunited.com

ALL kinds of people fall for this, even bankers and all other kindsbusiness people. These scammers are professionals.


BEWARE!
 
This is a classic online scam. Particularly from Nigerians. In fact, it's often called "The Nigerian Scam."

Always the same idea: for whatever reason, you're tricked into cashing a phoney cashiers' check for WAY more than you were supposed to receive, and 'trusted' to send the remainer.

The funny thing is that only honest people get hurt by it (though I did hear of one person who fell for it, decided to KEEP the extra dough, and spent it the same day, only to find out it never really existed. Hope they bought something tangible with it, at least!)

Always question why something is other than 100% normal and natural.

Especially online...
 
KingCarem,
Man I feel for you. I had a similar experience. I deposited the BOA cashiers check, waited 2 days for it to clear. Actually my bank made the funds available in 2 days but it took 5 days for BOA to clear. Somehow I had a bad feeling about the whole thing and I called BOA to confirm that the check cleared. They asked for the check info. Good thing I made a photocopy of the check and they told me that the check was a fake even tho it looked authentic with all the watermark. So I didnt get scammed as I caught it in time.

I get emails like that all the time about my cues and nowadays I just play along with those m-fers. Sorry it happened to you. I think most of the scams like this originates from Africa. Mine was from Nigeria as that where the enveloped was postmarked.
 
These guys have obviously made enough money to travel to the states.

My check was sent USPS from West Virginia and I sent the Money to a guy in the U.K. I have confirmed from Western Union that is was picked up in London.

Nigeria was never a factor during the deal, although I bet the MF's were from there.
 
I tried all kind of things to catch the scammer that tried me. I told him to ship the check............and I was just going to take it and cash it for CASH. Which I guess they would hold till the bank felt it was good....then give me cash. Then I figured now way for the bank to come say.....Give us our money back! Once I had cash....I would send him what ever he wanted. But he never replied.
 
Scam Sharing

Thanks, King and others, for sharing the scamming stories.

By putting as much info out there about these (MFers!) scams we can all benefit from shared knowledge and hopefully be more wary and better protected.

Remember- better safe than sorry!

-pigy
 
KingCarem, these people have violated any number of state and Federal laws, and there are quite a few resources available to you as a result. Here's a few:

The International Web Police - A good place to start disseminating information about your incident to help others avoid repeating it.

Internet Fraud Watch - The other clearinghouse for fraud activity. These guys handle telemarketing, mail, Internet and other sorts of fraud activity.

USPS Fraud Complaint Form - Here is the place to file a mail fraud complaint with the USPS.

IFCC - The Internet Fraud Complaint Center is FBI-affiliated. Your situation involves interstate mail fraud of a large sum of money, and is a Federal crime. These people need to know about it.

The fact that your case involves both the US and international destinations makes it a very attractive one from the law-enforcement point of view. Many fraud cases are all offshore, and US authorities are limited in their ability to respond. Our superior information processing capacity and recordkeeping in the US will help to make your case more researchable and prosecutable.

I strongly urge you to contact everyone in the above list, as well as the local police in West Virginia. They are the ones with direct jurisdiction over the US end of the scam, and need to be involved from the start.

You have a case here which is definitely solvable. I wish you the best of luck in your efforts, and please keep us informed as to progress.
 
There is not much you can do about it when the frauders are in ASIA! I am trying to find the email the scamer sent to me....................It will make you laugh. The guy that wrote it could have been 4 years old....Misspelled words, broken sentences, made no sense. I had to write the guy back and get him to explain what it was he wanted.
 
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