[VaSteve]

Anyone heard of this? It sounds like it could be a scam, but I can't figure out how it would work if it was.

Last month, my mom checked her bank account and found a mysterious $4800-something deposit. She didn't make it, it was apparently a transfer in from the Bank of Scotland. The bank researched it and it was deposited by some clothing company she'd never heard of. She took a cruise last week and saw the name of this company somewhere during her travels. As typical with my mom, spelling and exact names of parties are blurred or confused in these oral descriptions so I have little googleable material.

So the question is, if this is an errant deposit, why would it come from Bank of Scotland to a US bank in the account of a retired person. I was in banking for a little while, I recall that there are two types of accounts for personal/retail and commercial. If this is an error, how'd she wind up with it? If it's a scam, what's the angle? It's clearly not the "I'll send you $10K, you send me back $4500" we're used to seeing.