Internet Scams – Fake Cheques

June 25th, 2009

Over the last few months I’ve tried to be scammed on a number of occasions, all I’ve done to invite them is to have a website promoting my freelance website design services, use ebay to auction an ipod touch and place an advert on autotrader to sell a car. Apart from my own website, the other two events are very regular actions undertaken by thousands of people every day.

Fake Cheques To A Freelancer
I was contacted by email via the form on my website from a guy saying he had a client – a car sales company – that wanted a simple, static website – a brochure style website consisting of about 5 / 6 pages. Nothing too technical or time consuming. So I emailed back my quote and a brief outline of how I work and what I needed from his client. The quote was accepted, along with the promise of the content being sorted out very soon. We exchanged contact and address details, and I agreed to start work once I have the initial content through.

What I got through next was a cheque, for £2,000. This was about 5 times the amount that I quoted for the job – also, the cheque came from a company called Blue Square who are a recruitment company based in Bedfordshire. Initially I did not connect the cheque with the car sales job – I contacted Blue Square to find out why I had been sent this cheque as I had had no previous dealings with them. Blue Square asked me to send it to their head office, a few days later I received a letter from them confirming the cheque was fake and thanking me for sending it to them.

In the meantime I received an email, asking if I had received the cheque yet – I replied no, curious as to what would happen. I also mentioned that I do not invoice for the full amount at the beginning of the project. A few days later I got another cheque in the post, this time from the Bank of Ireland and again for £2,000. This time I took it to the police, who confirmed it was a fake – but were unwilling to take it any further as no fraud had taken place because I hadn’t done any work so there was nothing to be charged for.

Next, I got a phone call asking whether I had received the check from his client – it was from a mobile phone and the line wasn’t very good. I said that I had received the cheque, but it was fake. I asked if he knew his client was sending fake cheques – he hung up.

What they wanted was for me to try and deposit the cheque and send them back the balance from my own account in cleared funds – the cheque they had sent would of bounced and I would of lost about £1,500. The whole affair was very suspicious, the cheques for too much money, being posted from South London and the South of France, no compliment slip or letter included with the cheques and the poor grammar used in the emails. I’ve since spoken to an artist client who had a similar scam – but in her case the buyer wanted an original piece of artwork posted, after sending a fake cheque for 3 / 4 times the quoted amount.

Tags: business, fake cheque, fraud, freelance, internet scam, payment, website design