Scam Alert

Blade Borge

Blade Borge

Well-known member
All you freelancers listen up.

Got contacted to shoot some b roll @ my local zoo to send to a london zoologist for a seminar. Got an upfront payment money order. Order was for 5times the amount I asked for. Client said he mistakenly gave me the amount for the editor and other crew members as well. Needed to send the money back minus my payment. Online, the money showed up in my account so no red flags yet exactly.

Went to withdraw the amount from my account. Bank teller didn't see the money. Turns out it was a scam. That's the short version. Anyways, don't take a job from any zoologist, at least ones you can't see in person.
 
Sounds like a lot of :::shifts eyes::: monkey business.

Did you send that money back to him? Are you actually out anything, or did you catch it in time?
 
Yeah all I'm out is a $20 (zoo admission, but hey I enjoyed the zoo)

The amount he was asking to withdraw I didn't have already in my account, so when I went to withdraw, the bank was like 'uh you don't have that much to take out.' My bank teller instantly recognized the scam in the situation, bless him.
 
My niece also got into a similar case though it's not in video business. She was looking for a summer job and contacted one from craigslist for a house keeping job. The description said, all she has to do is to buy some grocery each day and deliver it to the house to his pregnant wife and they'll be flying in from England for a local job. So he sent her a check with 5x the amount he said he'd pay... then he sent an email saying that he made a mistake so whenever she could, minus the pay and send the rest back to him.
My niece showed me the check and I immediately told her that this is a scam... there's no way that it's true... because it sounds like scams to me... she threw away the check.
 
This is a very, very standard scam model. The basic design is to send a money order for more money than whatever service/goods they are supposedly purchasing. Then they ask you to return the difference. The catch? The money order is fake, and the bank unfortunately pays out on it - only once it becomes clear it's a fake (a few days later), the bank has YOU on the hook for the money. Sucks. That's because banks always assume the money order you give them is real, and it takes time for the bank to check out. When you deposit money at the ATM, have you noticed that they immediately credit you $100 of that amount? Why, you could have submitted a dirty napkin and written $1,000,000,000, and they'd immediately credit you $100. Same here, only they do it for the whole amount. Then when the napkin shows up (or money order is fake), YOU are liable. The reason this scam works is because people have undue faith in MONEY ORDERS. They think, "wow, money order, that's like 100%!" and it is NOT. They see the money order deposited and funds show up, and they go "wow, must be real" and it is NOT. It preys on people's lack of knowledge about how banks work and what money orders really are.

Now this scam mechanism is used in whatever million variations - you advertise a car on CL? Well, they'll pretend to buy your car, send you twice the amount and ask you to return the "overcharge". And so on for whatever it is. So it has nothing to do with avoiding zoo people, and everything with avoiding any job or product that asks you to return money - that's how the scam works.
 
They do the same thing with Certified Checks, because banks have to honor a certified check, and it takes few weeks to clear. You could actually withdraw some money, but then the bank will come looking for you.

I was trying to sell a car online (BMW Z-3) and a guy tried to scam me this way.
 
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