How to Spot the Fake Check Scam

Check scammers usually monitor on-line classified listings and offer to purchase expensive items like motor vehicles. They send the seller a check for more than the purchase price, invent a reason for doing so, and ask the seller to cash it and return the difference.

The check is forged, and anyone whose bank allows them to cash it will have to cover it.

The check scam is so common that it has its own website, Fakechecks dot org.Fraud dot org also has a section devoted to fake checks.

This new one is a variation on the theme.

The company named on the letterhead is Global Market Insite Inc, with a street address in Bellevue, Washington (suburban Seattle).

With the letter was a check for $4335.00 (picture #1).

I'm to deposit this amount in my bank account, keep some, and use some of the rest to evaluate the Western Union Moneygram money transfer service by sending it to any one of five named training agents. I'm to use what's left to make purchases and evaluate the customer service at any one of several retail stores. There's a form for me to fill out and return.

The letter has two phone/fax numbers. I'm to call one if I have any questions about the Western Union evaluation process. Its area code is 450 (Quebec). The other is a fax number where the documents from my purchases go; area code 973 (New Jersey).

A Google search for the phone and fax numbers in my letter returned no matches.

The letter, from a Washington company, was mailed from Canada (picture 2).

Some Canadians rent post office boxes in US border towns and use a US mail-drop address, both for convenience and to save postage. But the sender of my letter did it backwards. The letter, from a US-based company, is franked with a 96 cent Canadian stamp. That's about twice the cost of a first-class letter mailed from Washington to Michigan.

My envelope has two postcode prefixes (picture #2). K0A (K-zero-A) is in northeastern Ontario. J0X (J-zero-X) is in southern Quebec. The envelope has no return address.

So the company is in Washington, but sends its mail to US addresses from all the way across Canada, in either Ontario or Quebec.

Yes, and my mom is the queen of Siam.

Global Market Insite Inc is a legitimate market research company that actually does business in Washington. The logo on my letterhead is the same one that appears on the company's web site.

The logo has no doubt been copied and pasted without the company's permission, by someone in either Ontario or Quebec, onto a scam letter.

Global Test Market, another legitimate company that employs secret shoppers, has also found its logo on letters mailed by scammers from Ontario.

The scammers obtained my mailing address from one of several on-line survey sites I joined; to which I gave my real contact info with the assumption no one else would see it.

I could turn my documents over to the local authorities, call the FBI, the Mounties, the postal inspection services of both countries, or Ghostbusters.

By the time any investigation starts, the anonymous scammers will have moved on and created another scheme. The envelope has no return address, remember?

The practical thing to do with big checks that come out of nowhere is throw them away. Something that looks too good to be true invariably is.

While doing my detective work, I found on message boards stories of people who followed the instructions, deposited the checks, and sent the money. I'm assuming the stories are real.

If sending letters from Canada to the States at 96 cents CN each is worth it to the scammers, it's very possible that some people fall for the scheme. Their banks, that failed to accept the checks for the forgeries they were, are equally responsible.