A cautionary tale. I have a kit car for sale ( or rather all parts for a kit car) The fan club kindly agreed to advertise it for me. Sometime later, a girl contacted me by e-mail saying that she wanted to buy it and would I accept payment by banker's draft in euros. Eventually I agreed and a couple of months later, I received a draft drawn on a bank in the Republic of Ireland for approx 7 times more than the agreed price. This was followed up by a request for me to send the balance to the Benin Republic by Western Union. My local bank agreed to cash the draft and change money into sterling. Before doing so and being suspicious,I took the 'draft' which by the way looked very genuine to a bank in the Rep of Ireland, and asking if draft was ok. There I was told the draft was a clever forgery and the police were called. I was informed that I was lucky on a number of counts- 1- I had not tried to pass off the draft; 2- I had not released any goods unlike others who had been stung etc etc. Apparently the Benin Rep is up there with Nigeria in terms of scams.
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
Simon
MB Enthusiast
Thanks for the warning.
Beware encashing a cheque for more than the agreed price and then returning the overpayment because you have just laundered money for someone. The next account your cheque returning the overpayment gets credited to has just received legitamate money from your uk bank account. The money you were sent was less likely to have been clean!
PJH
MB Enthusiast
Also in Canada
A similar scam is operating in Canada.
Source Financial Mail 25 April 2004.
Someone was selling a rare car circa £270,000. He accepted payment is a different currency and the cheque WAS cleared before being detected as 'fake'. Meanwhile the exchange rate changed and the fraudsters had cashed the extra cash. His bank wanted him to repay £7,000 that it had 'lost' between deposit and detecting the fraud. In this case it was the bank that slipped up because it converted the Canadian dollars into sterling before the cheque was validated and so had to write off the loss itself.
Also
Email theft
Nigerian letter in Canada
419 Coalition Website
At this rate, being ROBBED at a stealership is quite cheap !!
Incidently, you can forward any suspect emails to abuse@DOMAINNAME which may help to put a block on them.
A similar scam is operating in Canada.
Source Financial Mail 25 April 2004.
Someone was selling a rare car circa £270,000. He accepted payment is a different currency and the cheque WAS cleared before being detected as 'fake'. Meanwhile the exchange rate changed and the fraudsters had cashed the extra cash. His bank wanted him to repay £7,000 that it had 'lost' between deposit and detecting the fraud. In this case it was the bank that slipped up because it converted the Canadian dollars into sterling before the cheque was validated and so had to write off the loss itself.
Also
Email theft
Nigerian letter in Canada
419 Coalition Website
At this rate, being ROBBED at a stealership is quite cheap !!
Incidently, you can forward any suspect emails to abuse@DOMAINNAME which may help to put a block on them.
Last edited:
Users who are viewing this thread
Similar threads
