Never understood how the process works and how the person offering money benefits from this. What do the IRS and banks (Chase, Capital One, Wells Fargo, etc.) do to get rid of this.
In: Economics
They use your account to cash fake cheques and send the money to mule accounts.
You get a cheque for $4000 and they tell you to keep $1500 for yourself and they send $2500 to an account that buys bitcoin, gift cards or cash from an ATM.
The bank clears the money as your account is in good standing, so they withdraw, say, $4000.
Then the cheques get cancelled and your account is -$4000 and you can’t close it until you repay the money.
They disappear with $2500 and you owe the full $4000.
What are banks doing about it? Educating customers, but if your greed and stupidity means you fall for online scams and give your login and password to a scammer, they can’t help you as you gave them away.
They use it for money laundering / scams I’d presume and then the person who’s account it is ends up holding the bag.
First off you or they reach out. They say they can make you some money. You willingly give your login details, if your bank is good they’ll try to send you 2fa code. Scammer will ask for it, you give it now they’re into your account. They use fake/fraudulent employer checks made out to you, depositing by mobile. (Hence why they need your online account.)You withdraw the money. You buy gift cards, (crypto now I’m sure) etc give them codes/ you go to Walmart(MoneyGram etc) send the money, or transfer crypto.
Days go by Bank doesn’t clear your checks, they bounce, you get ghosted, you owe all that money to the bank. You basically are trying to get rich and scam on the bank but that will never work. You’re a victim but a willing participant, so yeah don’t do it.
There is a TON of great information here, and a TON of TERRIBLE information here.
For everyone throwing in their two cents of ” yeah, I deposited a huge check, and it took a few days to clear.”
Please stop. Your check didn’t clear that quickly. This is exactly the misinformation that scammers hope you believe so they can scam you. You think it “cleared” in a few days because it’s available and you can no longer be scammed. So people get a false sense of security and send the money.
Checks take weeks to actually clear and often up to a month. The federal reserve forces banks to make the funds available to you quicker, long before it’s cleared for convenience.
Here is the specific law.
The Federal Reserve has set baseline rules for check deposits: The first $225 must be available the next business day, while amounts from $226 to $5,525 must be available within two business days after the deposit, and amounts of $5,525 or more generally should be accessible on the seventh business day
All of the above is faster than a check typically clears and hence opens the doors up for scams.
As a general rule for life anytime you have to ask how do they make their money? The answer is always that they are going to make it off of you. And for probably more, a lot more, than what you expect. If they get the opportunity they will try to steal everything, to clean out your bank account. People have gotten taken for hundreds of thousands of dollars. They will make friends with you, talk to you, buddy up to you, all for the inevitable pig slaughtering. Stealing your money is their job. You are their meal ticket.
This is an old scam
If some random person offers you money for free you’re getting scammed
If it sounds too good to be true, it’s a scam.
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