My daughter was selling cloth on Craig's list and some guy wanted it. He sent a check. The check was for more than the cloth. My daughter asked him about that. He said, he was traveling, but owed a guy some money and wanted her to wire the difference to that guy for him. (There was an extra $200 there for her) It was ok if she waited for the check to clear her account first. The check was from some medical institute. The check passed the first level of bank back checking, but when we explained what was going on, the bank ran a second level check and it came back a fraud.
They would have approved the amount, credited it to my daughter's account, given her money to send for a wire transfer, then taken the money back from her account when they found out later it was a bad check. The scam relies on the built in inefficiencies of money transfers between banks.
When the guy didn't see the wired money come through, he started texting about thievery and calling the cops. We ignored him and he went away. His given address was real, but the house showed as unoccupied via a real estate search. The actual owner's name was close but not exact to the one given. The institute check was from a completely different part of the country. The company the wire was to go to had a Web site claiming to be a Chinese company that sold security cameras. It was a pretty elaborate setup
-Will (Dragonfly)
