De Master Yoda
08-12-2007, 06:42 AM
The (fake) check is in the mail
By MARK GUNDERMAN mailto:mark.gunderman@ lee.net
Jason Froehlig walked into the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Department with check in hand. He had warned potential buyers of a truck engine he put up for sale on the Internet that he would take any bogus checks he received right to the police.
Sure enough, he let a $3,500 check sit in the bank for a couple of weeks and it turned out to be counterfeit, so he showed it to Investigator Dick Price at the Sheriff’s Department.
“It happens all the time,” Price said.
It happens to the tune of $1.1 million in fraudulent cashier’s checks that have been reported to the Sheriff’s Department in the past six weeks alone.
How many checks is that? Price can’t even guess, but he noted, “A typical denomination is $3,500 to $4,500.”
*
People all over Chippewa County are receiving the checks, and a few are falling for the scams that come with them. Arrests are extremely rare.
The growing problem reflects the Internet age, the widespread availability of computer programs that can easily mass produce fake checks, and very old factors like greed and gullibility.
“I probably get a half dozen a week,” said Detective Dave Johnson, who handles such cases for the Chippewa Falls Police Department. That includes calls from people who received bogus checks that Johnson never actually sees.
There is very little police can do, partly because the vast majority of these fraud attempts originate out of the country.
The scam
A cashier’s check used to be a fairly secure instrument, since it would not be returned for non- sufficient funds and counterfeits were rare.
But today all a con artist needs is an authentic cashier’s check from a real bank and a computer with a scanner.
“Once that check is scanned in, they can change anything on it they want to,” Price said. That includes the payee and the amount.
The bad guys print out counterfeit cashier’s checks by the thousands. All they need to do is turn them into real cash.
Most of the checks Johnson sees are to pay off bogus lottery winnings to people who never entered the lottery they supposedly won.
The victim may get an unsolicited cashier’s check for, say, $5,000 in the mail with an explanation that he or she had won a lottery, or was the only heir of the estate of some relative they didn’t know they had.
The letter explains: The small check is just to pay for taxes or fees. If the person would just call this phone number and make arrangements to pay those fees, then the full winnings will be released. If they make the call, they are told to send the money by Western Union to a particular place.
A person who falls for it deposits the check, sends the money, then finds out the cashier’s check was bogus.
Froehlig walked into another classic scam, but one he was smart enough to stay out of.
The party that sent him the $3,500 check drawn on the legitimate Wachovia Bank in Miami wanted him to take his $1,000 for the engine out of those funds, with the rest to pay for freight. He just needed to call to arrange for them to pick up the engine, for which he would have needed to wire so much money to them.
Of course no one would ever come pick up the engine, the cashier’s check would bounce, and he would have been out the money he wired them.
Froehlig said he received six e-mails in response to his offering the engine for sale. All appeared to be frauds.
“There’s a man who wants to send me $6,800,” Froehlig said. He was to take the price out and send the rest back. “There was a guy who was going to send $4,500; one was going to send $7,800.”
There are many variations. Sometimes merchandise actually changes hands. A bogus check is sent, and the merchandise is shipped. But the check is bad and the merchandise is re-shipped overseas by the time the seller finds out.
Playing the percentages
The vast majority of the time, the scam fails.
“The younger people are pretty sharp watching for things like this,” Price said.
“If it sounds too good to be true, it is,” Johnson said. Most people realize that and just throw the checks away. Sometimes they call law enforcement, and an officer tells them to just throw it away.
“We certainly get a lot of fraudulent checks,” said Andy Henning, compliance officer for Northwestern Bank in Chippewa Falls. Few of them, though, lead to anyone losing money.
“A lot of them the teller will recognize,” Henning said. Sometimes they will call the issuing bank to see if a cashier’s check is valid.
Once in a while, though, a teller will take one and deposit it in a customer’s account. If the customer spends that money before the fraud is detected, the crime is complete.
“They are legally responsible for it if they bring it in,” said Henning.
The con artists are only playing the percentages. They are out only incidental printing and postage expenses to run the con operation. If one out of a 100, or even a 1,000, fraudulent checks is turned into cash for them, they come out ahead.
Johnson is aware of a person in Chippewa Falls stung for $20,000 a few years ago. Johnson knows of another case where a person cashed a bogus check for $20,000 but instead of shipping the money to the bad guy, went out and bought a car. The bank came after him for the money, of course.
Price said senior citizens are sometimes the victims of these scams, and sometimes they keep it a secret.
“A lot of seniors don’t say anything,” he said. “They’re too embarrassed. How do you tell the kids you lost your retirement money?”
Impossible to trace
Price refers to this as the “Nigerian scam,” a sort of catch-all term for a variety of con attempts over the phone and Internet that come out of Africa. Many other foreign countries, including Canada, are hosts to the scams as well.
The point is, it is all across state lines and overseas. Most of the amounts are too small for federal agents to get involved.
And even if they did, the trail to the source turns cold. According to Price, the perpetrators employ “middle mailers.” These people are given a pile of checks, envelopes and addresses and their job is to just stuff a check in an envelope and send it out.
A middle mailer was caught in Chippewa County not too long ago, Price said. All they could do was confiscate the bogus checks. The person faced no criminal penalties.
“It’s not a chargeable offense,” Price said.
So where was that person getting the checks and the addresses? Eventually, the trail would lead overseas and out of reach of American law.
Johnson said a middle mailer of merchandise was caught in Chippewa Falls. People who accepted bogus checks for things they had for sale sent him their merchandise. His job was to repackage it and send it overseas.
“He didn’t know what he was doing,” Johnson said. “He thought he was involved in a legitimate business."
Who’s behind it? Look overseas
Occasionally someone local does face criminal charges, but only for knowingly trying to profit from the scam, not originating it. Johnson said those people know they have a bogus check and go shopping for a bank teller who will convert it to cash, knowing that it’s going to bounce.
Those people are charged with uttering a forgery.
What can be done? Not very much, from a legal standpoint.
Law enforcement wastes valuable time and resources chasing these phantoms when there is more productive work to do.
“People come in here and feel they are victims. We have a duty,” Price said, explaining why they bother at all taking the complaints.
Johnson said he wishes banks had stricter policies on releasing funds deposited from cashier’s checks, but he and Price agree the best approach is public education.
“If you get a check that doesn’t make sense to you, throw it away,” Price said.
“If it seems too good to be true, it is,” Johnson said.
Froehlig walked out the of the sheriff’s office still holding a bad check, but at least he wasn’t out any money because he knew how to be careful. He also still has a truck engine for sale if anyone has some real cash to offer for it.
By MARK GUNDERMAN mailto:mark.gunderman@ lee.net
Jason Froehlig walked into the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Department with check in hand. He had warned potential buyers of a truck engine he put up for sale on the Internet that he would take any bogus checks he received right to the police.
Sure enough, he let a $3,500 check sit in the bank for a couple of weeks and it turned out to be counterfeit, so he showed it to Investigator Dick Price at the Sheriff’s Department.
“It happens all the time,” Price said.
It happens to the tune of $1.1 million in fraudulent cashier’s checks that have been reported to the Sheriff’s Department in the past six weeks alone.
How many checks is that? Price can’t even guess, but he noted, “A typical denomination is $3,500 to $4,500.”
*
People all over Chippewa County are receiving the checks, and a few are falling for the scams that come with them. Arrests are extremely rare.
The growing problem reflects the Internet age, the widespread availability of computer programs that can easily mass produce fake checks, and very old factors like greed and gullibility.
“I probably get a half dozen a week,” said Detective Dave Johnson, who handles such cases for the Chippewa Falls Police Department. That includes calls from people who received bogus checks that Johnson never actually sees.
There is very little police can do, partly because the vast majority of these fraud attempts originate out of the country.
The scam
A cashier’s check used to be a fairly secure instrument, since it would not be returned for non- sufficient funds and counterfeits were rare.
But today all a con artist needs is an authentic cashier’s check from a real bank and a computer with a scanner.
“Once that check is scanned in, they can change anything on it they want to,” Price said. That includes the payee and the amount.
The bad guys print out counterfeit cashier’s checks by the thousands. All they need to do is turn them into real cash.
Most of the checks Johnson sees are to pay off bogus lottery winnings to people who never entered the lottery they supposedly won.
The victim may get an unsolicited cashier’s check for, say, $5,000 in the mail with an explanation that he or she had won a lottery, or was the only heir of the estate of some relative they didn’t know they had.
The letter explains: The small check is just to pay for taxes or fees. If the person would just call this phone number and make arrangements to pay those fees, then the full winnings will be released. If they make the call, they are told to send the money by Western Union to a particular place.
A person who falls for it deposits the check, sends the money, then finds out the cashier’s check was bogus.
Froehlig walked into another classic scam, but one he was smart enough to stay out of.
The party that sent him the $3,500 check drawn on the legitimate Wachovia Bank in Miami wanted him to take his $1,000 for the engine out of those funds, with the rest to pay for freight. He just needed to call to arrange for them to pick up the engine, for which he would have needed to wire so much money to them.
Of course no one would ever come pick up the engine, the cashier’s check would bounce, and he would have been out the money he wired them.
Froehlig said he received six e-mails in response to his offering the engine for sale. All appeared to be frauds.
“There’s a man who wants to send me $6,800,” Froehlig said. He was to take the price out and send the rest back. “There was a guy who was going to send $4,500; one was going to send $7,800.”
There are many variations. Sometimes merchandise actually changes hands. A bogus check is sent, and the merchandise is shipped. But the check is bad and the merchandise is re-shipped overseas by the time the seller finds out.
Playing the percentages
The vast majority of the time, the scam fails.
“The younger people are pretty sharp watching for things like this,” Price said.
“If it sounds too good to be true, it is,” Johnson said. Most people realize that and just throw the checks away. Sometimes they call law enforcement, and an officer tells them to just throw it away.
“We certainly get a lot of fraudulent checks,” said Andy Henning, compliance officer for Northwestern Bank in Chippewa Falls. Few of them, though, lead to anyone losing money.
“A lot of them the teller will recognize,” Henning said. Sometimes they will call the issuing bank to see if a cashier’s check is valid.
Once in a while, though, a teller will take one and deposit it in a customer’s account. If the customer spends that money before the fraud is detected, the crime is complete.
“They are legally responsible for it if they bring it in,” said Henning.
The con artists are only playing the percentages. They are out only incidental printing and postage expenses to run the con operation. If one out of a 100, or even a 1,000, fraudulent checks is turned into cash for them, they come out ahead.
Johnson is aware of a person in Chippewa Falls stung for $20,000 a few years ago. Johnson knows of another case where a person cashed a bogus check for $20,000 but instead of shipping the money to the bad guy, went out and bought a car. The bank came after him for the money, of course.
Price said senior citizens are sometimes the victims of these scams, and sometimes they keep it a secret.
“A lot of seniors don’t say anything,” he said. “They’re too embarrassed. How do you tell the kids you lost your retirement money?”
Impossible to trace
Price refers to this as the “Nigerian scam,” a sort of catch-all term for a variety of con attempts over the phone and Internet that come out of Africa. Many other foreign countries, including Canada, are hosts to the scams as well.
The point is, it is all across state lines and overseas. Most of the amounts are too small for federal agents to get involved.
And even if they did, the trail to the source turns cold. According to Price, the perpetrators employ “middle mailers.” These people are given a pile of checks, envelopes and addresses and their job is to just stuff a check in an envelope and send it out.
A middle mailer was caught in Chippewa County not too long ago, Price said. All they could do was confiscate the bogus checks. The person faced no criminal penalties.
“It’s not a chargeable offense,” Price said.
So where was that person getting the checks and the addresses? Eventually, the trail would lead overseas and out of reach of American law.
Johnson said a middle mailer of merchandise was caught in Chippewa Falls. People who accepted bogus checks for things they had for sale sent him their merchandise. His job was to repackage it and send it overseas.
“He didn’t know what he was doing,” Johnson said. “He thought he was involved in a legitimate business."
Who’s behind it? Look overseas
Occasionally someone local does face criminal charges, but only for knowingly trying to profit from the scam, not originating it. Johnson said those people know they have a bogus check and go shopping for a bank teller who will convert it to cash, knowing that it’s going to bounce.
Those people are charged with uttering a forgery.
What can be done? Not very much, from a legal standpoint.
Law enforcement wastes valuable time and resources chasing these phantoms when there is more productive work to do.
“People come in here and feel they are victims. We have a duty,” Price said, explaining why they bother at all taking the complaints.
Johnson said he wishes banks had stricter policies on releasing funds deposited from cashier’s checks, but he and Price agree the best approach is public education.
“If you get a check that doesn’t make sense to you, throw it away,” Price said.
“If it seems too good to be true, it is,” Johnson said.
Froehlig walked out the of the sheriff’s office still holding a bad check, but at least he wasn’t out any money because he knew how to be careful. He also still has a truck engine for sale if anyone has some real cash to offer for it.