found this report elsewhere
ssilvo
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When you are selling anything either on the internet or through newspaper "for sale" ads' you must be very wary of this new scam that is so attractive that it is very hard not to try to take advantage of.
Watch out for it...It works like this:
You may receive a phone-call or e-mail from a very plausible person that will offer to buy the article you have for sale. The person will say that he lives in Holland or somewhere and will deposit the amount you ask for your article PLUS enough money to pay for sending the article abroad.
Say that you are offering a second-hand car at £5,000, the scammer will say that he will pay £7.500 onto your account so that you can take the value of the car and forward the balance to an account which he will tell you of later.
You go to the bank once this money has appeared in your account, ( cleared ? ), and you withdraw the amount that you want for the car and for the transfer to the other account ( ostensibly to pay for the cost of shipping ).
After this transaction has been done and you feel that all is well your bank will come back and say that the cheque into your account is either forged, stolen or just "bounced" and they will ask for reimbursement of the cash withdrawn or transferred.
All of this scam is allowable because of the antiquated international bank clearing system and because of the fact that even although the money appears to be available to be used it is not fully cleared for anything up to two weeks after it appears in your account.
Of course, the banks are not going to lose out because of this weakness as even if they said that you could draw on the balance and if they eventually find that the check fails to fully clear it is YOU that is going to be held accountable for the cash withdrawn or transferred.
ssilvo
-----------------------------
When you are selling anything either on the internet or through newspaper "for sale" ads' you must be very wary of this new scam that is so attractive that it is very hard not to try to take advantage of.
Watch out for it...It works like this:
You may receive a phone-call or e-mail from a very plausible person that will offer to buy the article you have for sale. The person will say that he lives in Holland or somewhere and will deposit the amount you ask for your article PLUS enough money to pay for sending the article abroad.
Say that you are offering a second-hand car at £5,000, the scammer will say that he will pay £7.500 onto your account so that you can take the value of the car and forward the balance to an account which he will tell you of later.
You go to the bank once this money has appeared in your account, ( cleared ? ), and you withdraw the amount that you want for the car and for the transfer to the other account ( ostensibly to pay for the cost of shipping ).
After this transaction has been done and you feel that all is well your bank will come back and say that the cheque into your account is either forged, stolen or just "bounced" and they will ask for reimbursement of the cash withdrawn or transferred.
All of this scam is allowable because of the antiquated international bank clearing system and because of the fact that even although the money appears to be available to be used it is not fully cleared for anything up to two weeks after it appears in your account.
Of course, the banks are not going to lose out because of this weakness as even if they said that you could draw on the balance and if they eventually find that the check fails to fully clear it is YOU that is going to be held accountable for the cash withdrawn or transferred.
