Money for Nothing, and Your Chex For Free
When Frank Abagnale was doctoring cheques, he elevated it to an art form. He discusses in his book the various methods in which a cheque can be doctored, how to change the routing numbers so that the cheque takes longer to clear, and various other technical elements.
However these days it can be a lot more simple to get a real cheque from a real company for any amount you wish. Apparently, all you have to do is ask Qchex, an online check processing firm, to send you some company cheques.
Well, until a few days ago.
According to the FTC, "the Federal Trade Commission charged that Qchex creates and sends checks drawn on any bank account identified by a Qchex customer without verifying that the customer has authority to write checks drawn on that account. As a result, con artists have used the Qchex service to draw checks on bank accounts that belong to others."
These cheques were also used by "scammers also ... in overpayment schemes, in which the scammer overpaid an unsuspecting third party for items or services and asked that third party to wire back the difference between the price of the item or service and the amount of the bogus Qchex check. The checks initially cleared, so these recipients of Qchex checks wired the excess funds as requested. But again, when an unauthorized check ultimately bounced, the amount of the previously deposited Qchex check was debited from the victim's account."
A couple of months ago, Ed Dickson, had warned about Qchex, stating "Anyone who negotiates a fraudulent Qchex item (no matter how innocently) will be held responsible (victimized). A lot of people have already learned this, the "hard way."
Why would anyone be tempted to order cheques from Qchex, unless they were scammers? Well Qchex gave away a "free printer" to people who used their services and spent more than $100.00 and "guaranteed" that their cheques were 100% bank compliant, even using magnetic ink and high quality cheque paper. The giveaway, guarantee, and use of high quality items are all what you would expect of a legitimate operation.
What is unexpected is that fact Qchex apparently did not perform any background checks on who requested company cheques. Nice work.
