Audio Purchase scam that is happening almost every month

[Elliot G.]

I have had a few of these the last few months. The latest crooktrying to buy thge XVX I have advertised. They will pay the price or close to what you advertise. You will ask for a wire and they will tell you they will send a bank or certified check. The check will be a FAKE bank check.
If you deposit said check it will show up in your account in a few days, the person will tell you that they have shipping arranged to save trouble and money, they will come to pick the gear up and a few days later the funds will be reversed so you are screwed.
Be aware this is happening a lot. Personally I like to screw with these idiots but I am sure they will catch someone. I called the authorities and they don't want to do anything. I guess bad check passers arent victims!

 

[sbnx]

Isnt this easy. Wire x-fer means wire x-fer. If you can get a bank cheque you can wire the funds just as easily.

 

[Elliot G.]

Isnt this easy. Wire x-fer means wire x-fer. If you can get a bank cheque you can wire the funds just as easily.

true but not if you are a scammer.I know the difference I just want others that dont do this everyday to be prepared, this comes off of Audiogon btw. I have two checks this month for over 300k. They have a story and a reason for everything. Be aware ! Its easy to fake a check you can't fake a wire!

 

[Alrainbow]

being a contractor man is Elliot right
I could write a chapter on this alone.
the best one was a wire transfer , the payer was in Canada there emails were copied so when they asked us for bank transfer info the scammer sent them a fake email very close to us.
money never got to us and bounced around the globe. we got paid but I don’t know what to them.
big money gets lost often but no one talks about it

 

[djsina2]

Good industry to target since everyone is like 80 years old. Don’t sell to Nigeria.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

in this hobby if you don't know the person or have a mutual acquaintance to confirm who is who, just say no. especially for large ticket items. it's a small hobby world, but outside lots of bad actors.

not that complicated.

 

[marty]

Good industry to target since everyone is like 80 years old. Don’t sell to Nigeria.

I have no problem with Nigeria. I just received an email that said I just won their lottery. All they asked for is my bank account information in order to wire my money!

 

[Holli82]

I have no problem with Nigeria. I just received an email that said I just won their lottery. All they asked for is my bank account information in order to wire my money!

I think you and I have the same account #

1234567890

 

[Elliot G.]

in this hobby if you don't know the person or have a mutual acquaintance to confirm who is who, just say no. especially for large ticket items. it's a small hobby world, but outside lots of bad actors.

not that complicated.

that is a good policy but for those in the business its not a reality to know everyone. If you are selling anything on line I poosted this as a precaution.

 

[Ron Resnick]

And so is the recommendation for a seller to request a bank wire transfer as payment for a sale?

Are you aware that technically a bank wire transfer can be reversed (withdrawn) upon a claim of fraud by the transferee within the first 48 to 72 hours after the wire transfer is executed?

Nonetheless I think bank wire transfer is the safest course for a seller.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I'm suddenly getting a series of inquiries from buyers who claim to be in Taiwan. Is that part of the angle of the scam you have seen, Elliot?

 

[Elliot G.]

Once the wire is in your account they cant take it out. THis is what I was told by my bank. You can have buyers from anywhere that is not an issue. I do business all over the world. I only accept a wire transfer from out of the country, unless I know the client, but even then I dont want to pay 4 percent on PP . THis scam is not that. They send you a bank check. The check is a fake. If you are unware and deposit the check in a few days the funds will appear in your account. They then have aranged to pick the gear up ( their carrier not yours) if the frieght goes you will loose the gear and then you will have the funds taken back out of your account when they determine its fake. The fake process can take some time.
Banks suck with checks and how long they can take to do anything with them. The days of competent people in branches has long pased, like many things we are in the clerk area. If unsure take the check to an officer at your bank or even better the bank the check is drawn on if possible.
If it smells like fish it ususally is
If I am wrong on the wire thing then just wait 72 hours before you ship. I have never had a wire incident, cost is little to nothing, we dont pay to send a wire btw, and you have the money fast. I like fast

 

[Mike Lavigne]

for domestic transfers, using ACH is more secure than wire transfer, but not as fast. not sure how realistic to use for a one time payment from a buyer.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thank you, gentlemen.

Elliot, I know that's what the bank tells you. When you dig deeper you will learn that is not entirely correct. Under certain circumstances it is possible to reverse a wire transfer for the first 24 to 72 hours.

 

[puroagave]

Fake cashiers checks and the like have been a thing since the '90s when laser printers were becoming comonplace. It was happening a lot with person to person sales of used cars. Then it was a thing on craigslist, they would overnight the check and send a 'courier' to collect the items.

I was taken last year buy a wire fraud scheme using a mirrored website of a legit logistics company. They set up an escrow account and you'd wire the funds and you get a tracking number, etc. It still smelled fishy, but i was distracted with work and busy stuff I let my guard down. Bottom line, I lost my money to some scumbags in Eastern Europe...it was significant but not enough to change my life.

I don't know if this is true, but my bank tells me the statue is 7-yrs they can reach back and reverse a personal check if it was proven to be stolen or fraudulent. I simply refuse personal checks unless its a close acquaintance.

 

[Elliot G.]

Thank you, gentlemen.

Elliot, I know that's what the bank tells you. When you dig deeper you will learn that is not entirely correct. Under certain circumstances it is possible to reverse a wire transfer for the first 24 to 72 hours.

then wait three days. I always verify my client and never does anything ship on anything I am unsure off particularly if it is over 10k

 

[Elliot G.]

again my post was just to let people out there be aware this is happeneing a lot

 

[Steve Williams]

again my post was just to let people out there be aware this is happeneing a lot

Here's an even better one.....as you all know we have a classified section here for member looking to sell or to buy........last year we discovered someone who was not a member of WBF but in Russia somehow managed to list ads for sale of several different speakers. We never knew about this until one WBF member reported that this unknown member had. photos posted of speakers for sale which the WBF member owned and was advertising them on Audiogon. To this day we have no idea how he gained entry to our classified section. No payments were ever made for the ads yet somehow he was able to post this fraudulent classified. Several months later we again found another fraudulent set of speakers for sale I our classified section huh again was reported by another member who claimed those were his speakers that were for sale elsewhere

 

[stehno]

I have had a few of these the last few months. The latest crooktrying to buy thge XVX I have advertised. They will pay the price or close to what you advertise. You will ask for a wire and they will tell you they will send a bank or certified check. The check will be a FAKE bank check.
If you deposit said check it will show up in your account in a few days, the person will tell you that they have shipping arranged to save trouble and money, they will come to pick the gear up and a few days later the funds will be reversed so you are screwed.
Be aware this is happening a lot. Personally I like to screw with these idiots but I am sure they will catch someone. I called the authorities and they don't want to do anything. I guess bad check passers arent victims!

Excellent point, Elliot. Cashier's Checks can be devastating to the unaware seller.

About 18 months ago, I advertised an electric vehicle for sale and somebody offered full asking price of $81k. When I got the cashier's check, he included an additional $5k for shipping 600 miles to northern California. As if that wasn't cause for alarm. But sometimes people do stupid things with their money.

Long story short, I took the US Bank cashier's check to a US Bank branch (not my bank) and they would not cash it saying the numbers were out of sequence and it had US Bank's national HQ address rather than the local bank's. But they could not confirm it was fraudulent.

I'd heard a few stories about cashier's checks in the past but this episode caused me to further investigate.

What I discovered was, by law a bank must make funds avaialbe for the amount tendered on the cashier's check within 24 - 48 hours. What they don't tell us is that the cashier's check then goes thru a check clearing process exactly like a personal check and this can take weeks.

Had I cashed the check at my bank, I'd have $86k available to me and I would have shipped the vehicle. Then several weeks later my bank would have informed me the check was a fraud and I owed them $86k and the car would probably already be overseas.

Over the next few days, I was playing with the potential buyer with back and forth text messages while determining how I was going to play this out.

After a few days, my wife suggested I throw the cashier's check away. I said, I can't as there's a 1% chance it's legit and then I'd owe the potential buyer my EV and then I'm out $86k.

I decided to call the local police who seemed very interested in the matter and they came out to pick up the check.

The potential buyer reached out with one last text saying he needed my response to his previous question and i responded by saying, "Your check is now in the hands of the appropriate authorities and they should be reaching out to you shortly."

Never heard from him again. But the lesson learned was I will never deal with cashier's checks again.

 

[russtafarian]

Thank you for this post. My wife was just about to bite on a scam like this. Based on what I read here yesterday, I recognized what was going on and we were able to stop the transaction before any damage was done. Now she has the joy of communicating to the other party that she will be reporting the incident to USPS as mail/wire fraud.