As you may know, I have another business as a side line to my day job. Well, only last week we got a strange request from a so called customer.
Basically, a company from France approached us to buy a few works of art from our website. All was going well and we just said we’d ship the goods when we received the cheque (he wanted to pay by cheque).
The cheque arrived promptly, within a day or two. The first signal for us that it could be a fraudulent transaction was that the letter arrived with a stamp from South Africa. The next item of strangeness was the amount on the cheque. It was double the amount we had requested.
On questioning the client about the cheque, he said that the extra cash was to pay for the shipping of the paintings. We noticed a few other small things like the issue date fo the cheque etc. But as this guy had an answer for everything, we decided to have a chat with our bank, to see what they thought.
When my partner went into the bank, the girl behind the counter listened to his story and said she’s have to talk to her boss. So off she went. She came back about two minutes later. She returned and said “that looks fine”. My partner was like “Can you tell me for sure? And what happens if it’s not?”.
Her response was beyond belief for me. Basically, all we could do was lodge the cheque, it would take 6 WEEKS to clear and that if it didn’t we would be held responsible for any false claims. How ridiculous is that?????
Needless to say, when we contacted the client and let him know that we wouldn’t be shipping the art until the cheque clears in six weeks, we didn’t hear back from him………. yet….
This is a well known trick in the selling cars and bikes business.
Usually they get the goods collected by courier the next day they get confirmation of payment received (cheque).
That’s exactly what they were trying to do alright!
But the fact the banks didn’t think it was suspicious nor did they offer advice or even be able to settle it before 6 weeks I thought was ridiculous.