Anatomy of a check scam

I was walking home on a Saturday afternoon across a shopping center which has a Bank of America branch (where I have an account). All of a sudden, a guy walked up to me and told me an interesting story. He said he wasn’t a bum or anything, he had a lot of money. He then basically said his sister had been in a car crash and the insurance company had sent her a cheque which needed to be cashed. He couldn’t do it as he didn’t have a BOA account, so could I cash the cheque out and give him the money instead and I’d get 40$ that was remaining. Now I didn’t really care about the 40$ but went “What’s the risk here? Maybe its legit?” So I say okay sure.

Then he asks me for my name (not email or SSN or anything) which sort of got me thinking about this but I still go ahead. Then he texts someone and says “Yeah she’ll be right over”. Then she doesn’t come over but her “boyfriend” does come over. There’s a cheque with the “boyfriend” who thanks me a lot and in the “Pay To” section there’s my name with an amount of 4,963$ or whatever written. I’m still so fixated by the idea that someone needs help that I’m not thinking “Which insurance company issues a blank cheque?” And why?

Anyway, we go in to the bank and there’s a long line. Something intuitively is not feeling right at this point, so I look at the cheque and start studying its contents. It says “deposit refund” in the memo. Hmm? I ask why and he says “yeah its refunding my deposit”. So I think okay? Maybe its a downpayment that is being refunded? I don’t know. I continue standing in the line.

The line’s really big though and my spider sense is still tingling. I don’t know why. Maybe its because I’ve worked in security a lot, maybe it’s my brain intuitively guessing something’s off but I take out my phone and simply take a picture of the cheque without asking the dude. A few minutes later the guy is like “I think I’ll just ask him to do a direct deposit”. I’m like “You sure?” He says yes and we walk away. No harm done. As I walk away I see the first guy (from the back) taking to someone. Hmm I wonder why..

Anyway I go home and something’s still gnawing at me. I tell my wife all this and she’s interested too. She immediately thinks though it’s a fraud. Don’t know how. The address on the cheque is legit so it lowers the probability of a forgery although that can’t be ruled out either. The person whose address it is doesn’t pick up so I leave a voicemail and call BOA. BOA’s fraud department is immediately helpful and after listening to the story goes “By the time you finished, I was thinking - Please tell me you didn’t give them your money”. And I’m like “No, but how does this work?”.

In short the check is forged (somehow) and the bank cashes it. The scammers take the cash and run. Later the check turns out to be a forgery and the bank claims the money from the person they paid it out to. And there’s nothing they can do about this either. I’m on the hook coz I’m the one they paid out to. The person whose name was on the cheque returns my call Sunday afternoon and I tell them all about this. Turns out their office was broken into, their card and cheques stolen. So the cheque was not forged, they’d have been liable and I don’t know if I’d have then been liable as well and put into jail or whatever.

All’s well that ends well and I’ll call the cops and make a report too but I got really really lucky this time. The thing that bothers me the most is that I’m someone who works in security all the time and I really should not be so trusting of someone just because that communication is not digital. If the same thing had been digital, I’d have caught all the red flags inside 5 minutes or less. But just because it’s a person.. face to face… I let my guard down. I failed this time.

To conclude - the only advice I can give anyone is to remain calm and keep thinking when weird, uncertain shit like this happens. If you do, you have a good chance of being safe. Oh and a funny note, I also got to hear my wife say “What would you ever do without me around? You’re so gullible :)”. Happy holidays everyone.