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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Local Scene Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us March 1, 2006 Cashier’s check lands woman in a world of hurt Internet lottery scam involves forged note to cover bogus ‘fees’ By Alan Panebaker Ashland Daily Tidings On Feb. 1, Annette — an Ashland woman who preferred not to have her last name printed — received a letter from Veritas Financial and Management Services. She thought she won the lottery. Annette had entered an Internet sweepstakes lottery and was notified by the “financial institution” that she had won $102,016. The catch, which Annette would later find to be detrimental, was a stipulation in her winning that required her to cash a $2,895 cashier’s check that she was then required to send back to the institution as a “deduction.” The check — it turned out — was bogus. Not only did Annette feel silly, but she was out nearly $3,000. “I was hurting for money and a place to live, and I said, ‘Look, there’s a rainbow,’” Annette said. “It was devastating.” Annette was a victim of an Internet scam that happens on a daily basis in Oregon and across the world. Her scammers had essentially robbed her of the money by “laundering” funds that had not previously existed by overdrawing her bank account. Washington Mutual, her bank, accepted the check on good faith, as is the standard procedure. Once she had deposited it, Annette thought the check was cleared and went ahead to send the money. However, once she cashed the initial check, she never received her full winnings. In the forged letter from the financial institution — with no signature — Annette was told, “This is a prepayment to assist you with expediting the payment of the mandatory surcharge and processing fees.” After she realized she had fallen for the trick, it was too late for Annette. She contacted 1st Constitution Bank in New Jersey and realized everything on the check was real except for a fake check number. By then it was too late. The bank could not replace the money, and Annette was in a more desperate situation than from the beginning. “The thing that made it convincing was that it was a cashier’s check,” Annette said. “At the time I was in a desperate situation, and it was something positive.” While similar scams have been passed around since the 1980s, they appear to be increasingly common as the Internet becomes more and more a part of people’s lives. The Mail Tribune published a story Feb. 19 about a White City woman who was nearly a victim of a similar Internet scam, and Ashland Police Department detective Brent Jensen said he fields calls about Internet scams about once or twice a month. Unfortunately, Jensen said, the local police are forced to pass the buck to the FBI most of the time on these cases because of the lack of local suspects. “We don’t take a lot of them because there’s not a lot we can do,” Jensen said. “Usually they come from outside the country.” Another aspect of Annette’s case that seems to be a common thread in fraud these days is an illegitimate faith in cashier’s checks. “It’s been funny,” Jensen said, “because 20 years ago a cashier’s check was as good as gold.” This is no longer the case. The difficulty of tracing where someone is e-mailing from also stumps detectives and the FBI because scammers can easily re-route through different servers. “It can say they are in California when really they’re sitting outside a coffee shop in Nigeria,” Jensen said. Jensen’s advice to would-be victims is to delete any unsolicited e-mails, never accept an overpayment and never wire money back for something that has been overpaid for. “When I hear people’s stories, sometimes it’s hard to be sympathetic,” Jensen said. When Jensen does receive reports of Internet fraud, he usually sends them to Henry Gittleman — supervising agent for the Cyber Crimes Squad of the Oregon office of the FBI. Gittleman said he receives about six to 10 complaints — similar in some way to Annette’s — every day. He said the majority of them are scams where someone is trying to sell something on the Internet and receives an overpayment. Gittleman gets so many complaints that his department cannot take on all of them individually. Instead they advise people to report scams to the national Web site www.ic3.gov. The Internet Crime Complaint Center works as a referral mechanism for the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. “That way we can get a look at patterns then do analysis,” Gittleman said. “We try to track down subjects who are targeting a lot of people.” While Gittleman said there is no set dollar amount for a person’s loss that will cause the FBI to investigate. It is more a matter of widespread impact. Gittleman’s advice to potential victims is similar to that of the local detective’s. “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is,” he said. “You see a lot of people being carried away by greed. They see a quick way to make money, and they end up losing their shirts.” DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Merchant Account Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations Hammocks Water Filter Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams