I have had this email forwarded to me by the management of rentalsfrance.com, in which one of their advertisers describes an attempted scam. This one is more intelligent than the ones we are used to, so please take note:
Someone tried to scam me over the Bank Holiday weekend. Fortunately I had heard of a similar scam on BBC's Watchdog Program. This is how it works.
I received a phone call from a Scotch Ex-Pat working in Korea but living in the Phillipines asking to rent my place in May. He was very friendly and polite. He asked how to pay and then I told him he could transfer money into my UK Account. He then sent me a number of e-mails showing me instructions to his Bank (Bank of Scotland (Jersey) to authorise the payment. He then e-mailed me a day later asking me to check my account. When I did it showed £4000 paid in instead of £400. I told him that this had happened and he said Bank of Scotland were always doing this and he would get onto them. He then sent me e-mails supposedly from a B of S Official urging me to contact him to arrange the repayment of the £3600. In the scam on Watchdog they used cheques but I have no doubt that this electronic transfer will bounce after my £3600 has gone to them. I e-mailed back telling them my Bank had advised against paying a refund for over a week until the transaction had been cleared because of the scams that had been carried out in the past. Low and behold they have not contacted me since and I fully expect the £4000 to dissapear from my account as well.
You may want to advise your readers accordingly. The name used was Ian Ferguson but we all know how to make up e-mail addresses. It is very easy to be fooled by there people as they seem genuine.
The key to resisting these scams remains the same: do not send anyone money unless you are stone-cold certain that their payment has really cleared. Just because it shows in your bank statement does not mean it is cleared funds. I would wait at least two weeks and ask your bank to confirm that the money is really yours.
(By the way, on a side-note - does anyone else think this may not actually be a scam? How can you fake a wire transfer?)
From what little I know about electronic bank transfers, I thought the bank would not send any money unless they were certain the customer already had the money in the bank, or had handed over cash?
I thought an electronic transfer was like a bank managers cheque which was as certain as cash???
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What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?
I recently helped some estate agent friends of mine with getting a contract signed with English buyers. They paid a deposit by UK cheque, then phoned a week or so later to say that there seemed to be a problem as the amount had not been taken out of their account. At that point the money was already showing up in the account of the payee here. So account balances and transactions are definitely not definite and I agree that you should wait at least 10 days before doing anything.
And any situation like this should set your scam alarm bells ringing, and make you wait even longer before doing anything.
I agree that alarm bells should be ringing if they sent extra money to your account and that transactions may occur at different times.
What I don't understand is that surely a BANK would not send money (especially by electronic transfer) if they weren't sure that the money was already in the senders account? This is presuming it is a bone fida bank.
Do we have any bankers in this forum
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What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?
you are not going to believe it but I actually do know an Ian Ferguson answering this description!! Scottish, working in both those countries....so if he does re-appear please pm me and I will give you some questions that only he can answer!
We once had a payment from a reputable, international bank - and then another, superfluous, one. It was the bank's mistake, & I simply advised our tenant of the extra payment. It never occurred to me to do anything about it myself: it was the tenant's bank which had made the error & it was up to them to rectify it. They did, of course.
We also, once, had a US cheque we deposited in June cancelled with notification to us in August: the tenant had cancelled in the meantime, we had re-let & we didn't lose anything but I was surprised by the huge interval between paying in & notification of non-payment. Beware!
I am an ex banker and have been racking my brain to work this one out.
The issue is that although the transfer is on a UK bank, it is actually an overseas, off-shore bank (Jersey) and so the transfer is an international payment which complicates things.
I'm still trying to work it out, but whenever there are international transfers involved, it is never straight forward.
