Ebay Scam ?

soolin

katrina798 wrote: »

The full cheque was for £4,800 I paid £4100 in cash at a post office, to pay for 'goods' which were obviously fictious (he needed them for his job over here!). I withdrew the money in cash at one of my banks branches, and the lady behind the counter said nothing. I paid the money at the post office, and my bank phoned me 3 days later. I was thinking of going to the small claims court £200, after losing £4k, £200 is nothing. It would make me feel better to hear a judge make a verdict, quite frankly I have lost all faith in the banking system, so why would I trust anything they tell me. That is why I am searching for further advice. Many thanks, please keep it coming.

As has already been said you have no claim at all against the bank, in fact it could be worse for you as there are instances where banks have put the money laundering procedures in place, frozen accounts and notified the appropriate Government branch who has tied up the rest of the victims assets.

If you do a Google search for this you'll see some of these reports.

You were basically asked to do an illegal act, ie money launder which you chose to do. The fact that you then were scammed out if all the money is a different and more costly problem. Banks do not clear cheques that quickly, they clear for funds in approx 3-5 days but do not clear against fraud for much longer (lthough this will change in November this year).

katrina798

What part will change in November? Will they still clear money, that potentially hasn't cleared? No body that I have spoken to is aware that banks even do this, they all believe that it takes 5 days to clear a cheque and the money is truly clear. The banks have a long way to go in order to educate their clients and until they are forced to educate their clients, these scams will continue.
It does sound like I at least escaped the frozen bank account - that's certainly looking at the glass being half full : )

snax

"Banks do not clear cheques that quickly, they clear for funds in approx 3-5 days but do not clear against fraud for much longer (lthough this will change in November this year)."

Interesting comment by Soolin - so I thought I would do a search for more info .....

From: http://www.apacs.org.uk/resources_publications/documents/FraudtheFacts2007.pdf

Liability for cheque fraud

"Banks will examine each case of cheque fraud on an individual basis but, generally, if you are an
innocent victim of cheque fraud who has had a cheque or chequebook stolen and used fraudulently
you will be refunded by your bank.
However, if you are a victim of the scam because you have accepted a cheque or banker’s draft that
turns out to be fraudulent (and you have parted with either goods or services) or, in the case of
receiving a cheque or banker’s draft for an inflated amount, you have paid cash back to the buyer,
you are unlikely to get the goods back or have the money refunded by your bank.
From November 2007, however, a customer can be sure that after a maximum of six working days
(after paying a cheque or banker’s draft into their bank account) the money is theirs and they are
protected from any loss should the cheque turn out to be fraudulent – the funds cannot be

reclaimed without the customer’s consent unless the customer is a knowing party to fraud."

katrina798

That is extremely useful, thank you

soolin

This is the link to the changes in November:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6144756.stm

This is the current situation:

Currently, cheques can be rejected by a bank at any time if fraud comes to light later - possibly many weeks or months later - even if the person paying in the cheque has acted honestly, withdrawn the money and then spent it.

And this is the change...although it can be read as though cheques still won't clear for certain?

In addition, cheques will clear with absolute certainty after six days, unless the bank or other financial institution suspects that fraud is involved.

soolin

Sorry snax, forgot to thank you for your excellent link..I'll add that to my data base!

katrina798

All this information is extremely useful, and gives me a fully picture of where I stand. Thanks. : )

jan03

:mad:

katrina798 wrote: »

Sorry this is a little off the subject. But need some advice and I don't know how to post a new thread. Speaking of scams I have recently fallen for the 'lodger that sends you a cheque for too much money' one. The bank cleared the cheque into your account, so I sent the money on and then low and behold the bank tells you the money hasn't really cleared and withdraw the funds to the tune of £4.1k. I wouldn't have fallen for this scam if my bank hadn't cleared the money. I am very anger with my bank for clearing the money. Had they never cleared the money in the first place I would not have spent it. I feel that banks should be doing more to protect their customers if this sort of thing happens a lot. Has anyone ever successfully taken a bank to court over this and won their money bank. I am prepared to go as far as I need to, in order to resolve this and protect people in the further. Any information you can give is greatly appreciated..... or just supportive comments will do : )

my friend got conned like this once, his so called friends asked him if they could put a cheque into his account and when it cleared they would give him 2 grand for his trouble. cheque for 30.000 clears and my friend received his money, then a little while later he is being chased by his bank for the full amount due to him withdrawing money that wasn't his!!!
he never saw his friends again and couldn't back his story up either as he had met the lads on a night out only a month or so earlier and only knew them by their nick names, so he was taken to the cleaners!!!:mad: :mad:

soolin

jan it is very unusual for it to be so much as banks have house limits which the scammers are careful to work below. £30,000 should have triggered the money laundering process at any High Street bank, which would have meant the person paying it in would be notified of extra clearing time and would have been asked to confirm where the money had come from. This is an absolute nuisance when you are legitimately paying in cheques but it is all to do with stopping people paying in drugs money. That's why you find the scammers tend to stick to smaller amounts, not because they want to go easy on the victim, but becasue they know they will (usually) be caught out if they try for more.

Until very recently the house limits were usually as low as £3000-£4000 but I think they have increased a bit as many people now routinely shift that sort of money around from legtimate deals.

CHR15

Isn't it £8,000 now.

I visited a few Car Auctions recently and it was a plastered all over the place they can only accept Cash up to £7,999 due to money laundering regs.