the fake check / cheque scam working Procedure

The check is no good, even though it appears to be a legitimate cashier’s check. The lottery or Ebay seller or "payment transfer" job angle is a trick to get you to wire (Western Union or MoneyGram) money to someone you don’t know.

If you deposit the check and wire the money, your bank would soon (several days to as long as 6 weeks) learn that the check was a fake. And when the check finally clears the system and bounces, you’re out the money because

• the money you wired can’t be retrieved, and
• you’re responsible for any check you deposit — even though you can’t know whether they're fake or genuine.

These are very important points.  The checks may look real and even have real account numbers on them.  Your bank may be able to confirm that the bank it is drawn against is real and the account is also real.  But that does not mean that the check itself is genuine.

For example, it could be a simple forgery.

• Someone stole the blank checkbook and write forged checks. 
• Or a criminal stole checks that were delivered to a person's mailbox.
• Or a criminal, working as a clerk in a store, copied down your account number and bank when you paid by check, and used this information to make forgeries.

See the movie "Catch Me If You Can", starring Leonardo DiCaprio, for a good example of how this was done even 40 years ago.  Modern computer, scanner and printer technologies make it very easy for criminals to make real looking forged checks.

Many fake checks look so real that bank tellers are reporting being fooled. The scammers use high quality printers and scanners to make the checks look real. Some of the checks contain authentic-looking watermarks. These counterfeit checks are printed with the names and addresses of legitimate financial institutions. And even though the bank and account and routing numbers listed on a counterfeit check may be real, the check still can be a fake.

These fakes come in many forms:

• cashier’s checks
• money orders
• corporate
• personal checks.

This is just one example of a counterfeit check scam that could leave you scratching your head. The Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency, wants you to know that counterfeit check scams are on the rise.

Fake Checks: Variations on a Scheme

Counterfeit or fake checks are being used in a growing number of fraudulent schemes, such as:

• foreign lottery scams (as described above),
• check overpayment scams,
• Work from home scammers (eg. payment transfer manager)
• Internet auction scams, and
• secret shopper scams.