Are you a nice person, does that make you a target for fraud, probably? Be nice, be respectful but be smart?

An email from a reader told me a story that is to common to many in the internet fraud circles. I am going to be deliberately vague as to names and locations.

A buyer suggesting over payment on an item, with an agreement that the seller will wire them the extra cash. When it all comes down the seller gets burned and the buyer get away with the cash.

Here’s the story -

This woman used a local website similar to craiglist to sell a unique item that she wasn’t at all sure anyone would be interested in. To her surprise she got an email from someone claiming to be in New Zealand. This person wanted the $500 dollar item she was selling, but could only buy it, if she agreed to take a cashier check for more than the amount and wire the cash to the buyer. The reasoning said the buyer, was that thy could not cash the check in New Zealand. Being very nice but also cautious this woman said, “I need to check with my bank and see what they say about this”. She took the cashier check to the bank, the bank looked at it and verified it was authentic and said – yep good as gold you shouldn’t have any problems.


She cashed the check, sent the money by wire to New Zealand and everything was fine….until the check issuer cam back and said the check was no good. This woman who I know personally and is a very nice and very kind person, thought she was doing someone a very big favor. It ended up costing her $2,000 dollars to find out how slimy crooks can be on the internet. In this case the amount of damage wasn’t enough to warrant a Internet Fraud Attorney but she did report the incident to the state police who are build a case file for an ongoing Fraud Investigation related to this type of activity.


There are literally thousand of cases where crooks take advantage of kind-hearted people and rob them blind. Please continue to be kind-hearted but never fall for wiring money to anyone, don’t even start the conversation with them. Just don’t do it, at some point they are going to get the best of you and you will be the one to pay, not them.

The federal trade commission now has a website on what you need to do to protect yourself. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/overpayalrt.htm