Fraud Warning
For Sellers of Boats and Merchandise
Don't Get Ripped Off By This Scam!

Posted August 2004
Attention C420 Enthusiasts,
This scam is a few years old and has been mostly limited to the sellers of cars and motorcycles. Now they are after boats sellers too. The J/24 class has notified us that their classified advertisers have been targeted. These scam artists typically pose as foreign buyer's agents and are offering to pay MORE than the asking price for your boat. They always pay with very real looking cashier's checks. In return for paying more than your asking price, you are asked to send the buyer or a shipping agent the amount of the overpayment after you have deposited the cashier's check in your bank.

WARNING! These cashier's checks are forgeries! Federal banking law requires that cashier's checks be credited to your account within 5 days of deposit. However, the check is not made good until it has cleared at the issuing bank. Your local bank will likely not catch the forgery until the check is returned to them, and this can take as many as 3 to 4 weeks after you deposit the funds. By that time you (having access to the funds and thinking the check was good) will have already sent the money to the buyer. When your bank discovers that the check was a forgery, you will be liable for returning the total amount of the forged check to your bank. Basically, the scum bags have stolen your money.

In an additional twist, if the scam artist scum are successful in getting your money with the original overpayment scam, they will target you again. Usually they will try to get the rest of the money back by claiming that the buyer has recently died and is unable to complete the purchase. They will ask for an entire refund on the money that does not exist because the original check was a forgery.

How does this work? Read the following links carefully.
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/carsale.asp
http://www.oag.state.tx.us/oagnews/release.php?id=364
http://www.ifccfbi.gov/strategy/11403NigerianWarning.pdf

If you have been ripped off by this or a similar scam, please report this to the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center at http://www.ifccfbi.gov/cf1.asp