Scams and Trying to Educate People

I had a former co-worker email me the other day and she told me she was reading her Homemade Simple Magazine, and saw my name in it.

While I was VERY happy to see this article about scams, since this helps to educate people to what is going on, I was disappointed to see that some of the facts were not accurate.  Here is a portion of the article that is speaking about how to verify the status of a cashier's check . . .

To find out a check’s status, call your bank twice (talk to two different workers in case one doesn't understand the process) to verify that the check has been fully processed. Otherwise you lose the money if the check is a fake.

This would not be accurate.  In the case of our story, I spoke with two different bank employees BEFORE I withdrew the money from the account, and both of them told me that the check was "good", "clear", "verified", "funds were available" and that I "had nothing to worry about".  Once we found out the check was counterfeit and were dealing with the bank's loss prevention department we asked them the same question, and we had two different people from THAT department tell us that "a cashier's check is verified as good within 24 hours".  These people in the loss prevention department knew what had happened to us, yet they were still giving us the same inaccurate information.

The ONLY real way to find out if the check is counterfeit or not is to call the bank that is listed on the check as the issuing bank.  Also, you cannot trust the phone number listed on the check.  The scammers have gotten smart and have started altering those also so that they go to one of the people within their group who will tell you that the check is good.  You need to do a Google search to find the official website of the issuing bank, or the Yellow Pages listing for that bank, and then call that phone number.

The advice from this article in regards to counterfeit cashier's checks would not save anyone from becoming a victim of these types of scams.  It is sad, because the point of the article was to show real world situations that the everyday person could become involved in, and how they can be aware and protect themselves from these scams.

It looks like we still have a LOT of education to do, especially to the people that are trying to help educate the average American.