A Scamer That Got Caught!

[John Rogers]

This past spring I got a UPS overnight envelope and inside was a short letter and a $3500 check for "my account refund"! I thought whoa, this is from a company in New York City and the package was mailed from Newport Beach CA so right away I suspected something weird. I went to our credit union and they said that yes it was a scam as I suspected and as we were talking I noted they misspelled my home town, Chula Vista so that told me it was bad.

So the back called the company in NY and their CFO said a lady, high up in sales had been fired and had taken a bunch of company checks with her and they had been unable to track her down. I noted the return address was right up the road from us and the lady said she would contact the NYPD fraud unit. Later that afternoon I got a call from them and confirmed all the package info. Two days later, a man and a woman in really nice suits rang our door bell and had those ID cards with FBI in all caps and thanked me for helping out. Seems that since the bad checks were traveling across country it was a federal offence and the couple up north had been arrested and taken back to New York! They did not mess around it seems.

Made me feel pretty good to help out.

[Rick V]

Good deal

[Por_sha911]

I love stories with happy endings!

[ossiblue]

I wonder if this is the same person that ran a Craigslist scam I heard about a couple of days ago. Guy was selling his car for $2500. Scammer calls, says he'll buy it, sends a check to cover the sale plus shipping. Seller takes check to bank to see if it's legit, and it turns out it is a stolen check. If he had cashed it, he could have been on the hook for the money as well as wire fraud with nothing to prove his innocence. This was also in Cal., so maybe it was the same scammer.

[Tobra]

My office manager had some checks stolen out of her mailbox. Pretty sure it is the sketchy characters across the street. They tried a few thousand worth of checks here in Cali, tried a few thousands worth in Oregon. I will be surprised if they do much about it.

[Chocaholic]

How do these people sleep at night???

[rwest]

"How do they sleep at night?" On mattresses they bought with stolen checks!

Even though most of these people steal small amounts, I really wish "we" would go after them to send a message that it is not any easy way to make money.

Nice to hear at least the scum in the OP got tracked down.

[weseeeee]

I agree it's nice to see these guys get arrested. They can be creative POS's

[cstreit]

What was the scam if they sent you a bad check?

[wdfifteen]

Glad they caught the miscreants. I don't understand the "scam." They sent you a bad check. How did they expect to get anything out of it?

[onewhippedpuppy]

Good story. Pity it doesn't happen more often.

[John Rogers]

As I understood the issue, the crime was the theft of the checks and using them to access an account they were no allowed to. One of the people that came to the door to tell me about it said that since I was over 65 they added "elder abuse" to the charges. It wasn't until later that I thought....."how did the police/FBI/law enforcement know how old I was"? But then I guess they "know everything"!

[speeder]

How did they abuse you? By trying to give you stolen money? I don't understand the scam either.

[John Rogers]

Sorry for the confusion, I forgot to mention the $150 fee they wanted for sending me the check and when I read the letter the wording was in a smaller type just over top of the perforated line where the check was attached in one of those legal looking documents. I did not see it but the lady at the credit union spotted it right away.

I got two more of these in June when we did a HARP refinance of our house and they were refunds from Green Light Financial but the young lady that handled the paper work and the notary both said we would be getting them so I did not get too excited.