'Cheque Overpayment Fraud' is targeting innocent vendors

A11

By James Foster
Times & Transcript Staff

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A Metro Moncton woman is turning the tables on scam artists who use online sales websites to try to flim-flam innocent sellers.

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RON WARD/TIMES & TRANSCRIPT

A Moncton woman wants everyone to be aware of a scam targeting users of online buy-and-sell websites, in which the crooks greatly overpay for items they buy and ask the vendor to return the surplus funds to them. Unfortunately for the innocent party, the cheques used are fraudulent, leaving the innocent parties on the hook for thousands of dollars.

Mandi Faddoul caught on to the fraud before she could become a victim, and now she wants everyone to know how to avoid the trap that was laid for her.

"If there are people out there who don't know about this," Faddoul said, "I'd feel bad."

The scam is actually not new; it's just been adapted to target users of online classified ad sites, like Kijiji and eBay for example.

Faddoul had put her wedding dress on sale on the online classified ad site Kijiji for $500 and soon got a nibble from an interested buyer.

"She said she was interested in my 'item,' which she never did call it a dress, she always called it my 'item,'" Faddoul recalls.

The potential buyer said she would forward a cheque by registered mail and have "her shipper" contact her to pick up the dress.

"I thought this was all bullcrap, but went along with it."

Faddoul simply theorized the buyer perhaps had her own business and her own regular shipper.

Eventually, she received a letter written in very poor English with a very legitimate-looking cheque for $2,500. The letter asked her to cash the cheque, take $550 for herself and transfer the rest to her "shipper" via Western Union. Alarm bells immediately started ringing in Faddoul's head. She called the RCMP and Phone Busters, the anti-scam task force, which confirmed her fears. Had she proceeded as asked, she would be out $2,500.

The way the scam works, shysters attempt to con well-meaning individuals into cashing bad cheques and ask them to send the bulk of the proceeds from the cheque back to the crooks. Once the cheque bounces, days later, the innocent vendor is on the hook for the full amount while the crook is long gone.

"I would have been out $2,500," Faddoul says. "Luckily, I thought better of it."

Phone Busters, the Canadian anti-fraud centre, has heard it all before from vendors who were unfortunately not as wary as Faddoul. "Anyone selling goods should be suspicious of any cheque, especially if it is for more than the agreed selling price," the agency says.

"To protect yourself against this sort of scam, never agree to a deal in which the payer wishes to issue an amount for more than the agreed price and expects you to reimburse the balance. The scammers use a variety of excuses to explain the overpayment, but any such excuse should be treated with the utmost suspicion."