AG’s Office Offers Warning About Check Overpayment And Money Wiring Scams

HARTFORD — Check overpayment and money wiring scams are becoming more and more popular, and more and more clever, says Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

The setup for the scam can be different every time: sometimes a scam artist contacts a consumer to buy something advertised for sale in the paper or on the Internet, sometimes the scammer sends a check to pay for work done at home, and sometimes they offer an “advance” on a fake sweepstakes or lottery you have supposedly won.

All of these are scams and they all end the same way: with you, the consumer, losing money.

Here is how the scam operates: The people you are doing business with send you a check for more than the amount they owe you, and then instruct you to wire the difference back to them. Or they send you a check with instructions to deposit it, keep part of the amount for your own compensation, and then wire the rest back to them for one made-up reason or another.

The checks in these scams look real — in fact, they often look authentic enough to fool bankers — but in reality, they are fraudulent.

The results are always the same: the check eventually bounces, but not until you have wired them the money. The scammer has disappeared, and you are stuck, out the full amount, including what you wired to the scammer.

Mr Blumenthal offers these tips for avoiding check overpayment scams:

éKnow who you are dealing with. Independently confirm the buyer’s name, street address, and telephone number. Be wary of selling something to a person who appears to be in a foreign country.

éIf you are selling something over the Internet or through a newspaper ad, say No to a check for more than your selling price, no matter how tempting the plea or convincing the story.

éDo not wire money back to anyone. There is no legitimate reason for someone who is paying you or giving you money to ask you to wire money back.

If you have been the victim of such a scam, report it to Attorney General Blumenthal at Attorney.General@po.state.ct.us, the National Fraud Information Center/Internet Fraud Watch (a service of the National Consumers League (NCL)) at Fraud.org or telephone the agency at 800-876-7060, or the Federal Trade Commission at FTC.gov or 877-FTC-HELP (382-4357).

The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices in the marketplace and to provide information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. Bilingual FTC counselors are available to take complains. The FTC enters Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the United States and abroad.

Additional safety tips are available online from the FTC at OnGuardOnline.gov, and from the NCL at its website.

OnGuard Online is a multimedia, interactive consumer education campaign provided by the FTC and a partnership of other federal agencies, the technology industry, and consumer advocacy organizations including the NCL. The site covers online safety topics including spyware, identity theft, spam, and cross-border scams.