I have two technical legal points to make about dealing with this scam:
1. If you are ambushed or blind-sided by the appearance of the
cashier's check for MORE than the amount of the sale, that is, they led you
to believe the check would be for $5,000 (or whatever the cost of the goods
sold, for example), but when you open the envelope, the check is for
$8,000, you may adopt the position, for at least as long as it takes to
determine whether or not the instrument is valid, that it is a gift
received in the mail. Had you received a $5,000 check, as you discussed,
then that would not have been a gift when it arrived. But, since you never
discussed the $8,000 check, use the USPS regs and statutes to call it a
gift, because, absent a prior bona fide business relationship with a
sender, anything you get in the mail that you didn't order or ask for is a
gift. That absolves you of any duty to send anybody anything, on account of
it. If the $8,000 check arrives, and is accompanied by a writing saying how
the additional $3,000 is to be handled, then that might also make it not a
gift, but you are then free to send the whole thing back to the sender and
say that this additional transfer of funds wasn't part of the deal. Either
of these actions by you (calling it a gift and doing nothing, or sending
back the check with the overage amount) will reveal the true nature of
whoever is on the other side.
2. A forged check is NOT subject to the collection and
funds-availability of a genuinely-negotiable instrument. Just because YOUR
bank puts eight grand into your account after 3 or 5 days, as the case may
be, doesn't mean there is a way for a forger to know that. That is, if you
deposit the check, and your bank pays it, but you tell the buyer that your
bank is still holding it for collection (if you say something like, "The
funds are still being held by my bank, because there is some question about
the authority of the drawee bank [the bank on the face of the document; you
could also use the term "payor bank"] to pay the instrument," that will be
the absolute truth), only the honest buyer will have a bank to go to ask if
that check has been paid or not. Therefore, repeated, and
ostensibly-patient, inquiries by the buyer, over time, may be a signal to
you that there is no bank on HIS end with whom he can check. Mutatis
mutandis, if YOU were the buyer, and YOU sent someone a REAL cashier's
check, and your seller kept telling you that his bank hadn't released the
funds, yet, wouldn't YOU go, sooner rather than later, to YOUR bank and see
if it had been presented through the clearinghouse? If he is a forger, you
can even smoke him out by saying, "Why don't you go to, or call, YOUR bank,
and see if they have been getting the inquiries from my bank, and then get
back to me and tell me what they say. Better yet, get me a phone number of
someone at your bank that the people at my bank can talk to. I think that's
the best way to clear this up."
3. Is there anyone please,on the list thast will help me to move
SIXTY-SIX TRILLION DOLLARS USD$ out of the country. My wife she was the
queen ,and these was her monies, but she was assassinated dead, and now
they want to kill me, too. And I am in hidding. I am prepared to pay a
goodly portion of these money to whoever help me, TWENTY PERCENT (25%). I
pick you because of your upstanding character, honetsy and very large
instrumentality. It is well-known, even in my country, where I was the
Minister of Accounting and Treasuries. If this noble entreaty appeal to you
and you can be of your glorious and merciful assistance, then kindly to be
sending me please your credit card and bank information right a way.
Bob
Hey, yo, hepty-doop!
OK
End
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No virus found in this outgoing message.
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Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.21.7/1335 - Release Date: 3/19/2008 9:54 AM
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