Fake Certified Cheque

[Manitoba deli]

Not meaning to vent here, just to make others aware, I guess there are people now faking certified cheques. My nephew advertised an old quad on Kijiji, made a deal with someone, met them in person and accepted a certified cheque, deposited it and thought all was good. Cheque came back as a fake. And it was for an old beat up quad worth $900. Man the sleazeballs are getting desperate. I still like to trust people and take personal cheques, but I guess I've been fortunate that I have always been dealing with decent human beings.
Jason

[Jolly Roger]

Yes, its a sad state of affairs that scum-buckets like that take advantage of honest people. Hope they track down the bugger.

[yojimbo]

Its one of the ways the nigerian scams work, cleared cheques actually arent cleared at all until they are returned to the 'issuing' bank, which in the case of Nigerian banks can take months, they then reject them and your bank takes back its money.

Even paypal is safer.

[nxski]

I never accept cheques for my work or products unless I can take it to the bank with the person who's cheque it is. With smart phones, email money transfers, PayPal and cash, I see no need to risk it.

[TardisDeli]

Any cheque, certified or not, including travellers chqs, can be returned back and your account debited for up to 6 months after you deposit it (and even longer if the bank suspects fraud). Yep, chqs are bad things these days --- cash is best, but even so, the fake money is so good these days, even I can't tell the difference. After working in the back office of a bank, I only use cash for everything...and keep accounts at more than one bank in case an account get frozen for suspicious activity by bad people.

Sorry you got ripped off. any chance of contacting your local police department "White Collar Crime" team, they probably would be interested as it helps form a pattern of activity for the suspects. Get a sob story in the local newspaper, maybe a good samaritan will help?

christine.

[Manitoba deli]

It wasn't actually me that got ripped off. It was my nephew, and that is part of what really bugs me, what is a 17 year old kid going to learn from this, trust no one, or take what you want. The police say that they can't (more like won't) do anything about it. I never realized how easy it would be for someone to fake a certified cheque. The bank teller took it without looking twice at it. Personally, I like the barter system.

Jason

[konadog]

The police say that they can't (more like won't) do anything about it.

Slackers... What's the good of them?
Condolences to your nephew. I suppose he'll learn that we share the world with a large population of assholes. They look just like people, but do things like use fake cheques to steal from kids...

[Rattlenbang]

A sad experience, but at least he learned a very crucial lesson with a fairly inexpensive item. This happens with people selling $40,000.00 vehicles. When you start getting into high value items, rarely is cash used - who wants to walk around with $40,000.00 in their pocket? It is possible to get guaranteed documents; dealers rarely sell cars for cash. But it takes due diligence with the seller to get confirmation info from the buyer's bank. Given the incredible amount of fraud out there, every young person needs this lesson. It's just regretful that he had to learn it by losing money.

[psilosin]

Cash, gold/silver or bitcoins/litecoins are all you can rely on these days.

Cheques and Money Orders are now useless with fakes. PayPal is almost just as useless with rampant chargebacks (they 99.9999% side with buyer if a jerk buyer says they did not receive an item from Ebay etc etc). Even trying to trade for furs or whale blubber isn't as safe as it used to be. Sucks.