Pay and refund scam - alive and kicking against Melksham businesses
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-05-16 23:04:10 - Graham EllisFrom my email box, reproduced with permission ...
Hello!
I wonder if you would be so kind as to circulate a warning to your members for me? Recently we were exposed to an attempt to de-fraud us and we would like to let others know so they know what to look for. This is especially important to new businesses who might not realise what is going on or might be desperate to benefit from the fraud themselves.
How did it happen? We were approached by an unknown businessmen looking to book our photography service for August for his son's wedding. This done by email. After a strange few emails where the question of budget and costs were skimmed over by him I decided just to give him a price. It was all a little wishy washy but in the end we received a cheque (posted in the USA but from a Spanish business). The cheque looked legitimate but was for four times the amount we were after! I questioned the guy and he said his associate was meant to have sent me my deposit and the rest to him, but had made a mistake and sent me the entire amount. Cutting to the point, the idea was that I cash the cheque (probably stolen), keep my share and forward the rest to him (tempting for a small or struggling business) but the reality is that it does get flagged eventually and the cheque recipient is then responsible for paying back the entire amount!
Anyway, this did happen to me this last week (I was savvy though so did not get stung) but thought that others should share this experience so as to be on their toes for anything similarly suspicious.
This is a varient of an attemped scam be see quite often for hotel rooms:
* Contact books a number of rooms for his "special guests" and pays up front
* He then cancels rooms and requests a refund but "I have changed my card provider since I booked" or some such excuse
* Turns out that original card was stolen, and - guess what - hotel also has to pay back the original booker as it was done "cardholder not present".
And it's a double whammie if we have turned away other business while the rooms were blocked.
There's another varient with high capital items such as narrowboats ...