I just had a "buyer" ask for my wire account details to pay for a watch. This was from a guy in the UAE.

Now I've sold to the UAE before, but the general attitude of this particular "buyer" was a bit shady.

I gave my wire info, the account number was a savings account, so that demand draft fraud would not be possible (the scam only works with checking accounts). From all discussions with my bank, my understanding is that giving out the information is not enough to be able to take money from the account.

"Buyer" has yet to send payment after a couple of days, so at this point I am assuming it is an attempt at fraud.

Watching my accounts closely now to see what happens. As far as I know, I'm completely safe, but the only way to be sure is to test.

 

Give them more than a few days!

I use an intermediary, ozforex, so it can take 1-2 business days for the $ to get from my bank to ozforex, let alone onto the seller's account.

 

I have had wires take a week, sometimes more if an intermediary bank is used.

The best way to prevent fraud is to keep a ZBA with an ACH filter in place.

 

Simple yet effective advice. All my wire transfer transactions are via my savings account also, and I never stopped to think of it as a safety feature worth posting. Thanks for picking up the slack!

 

Interesting. Sometime ago I spoke to an "expert" about the technicalities and safety nets wrt wire transfers in my bank and this detail was never mentioned...I think a follow up call is in order... thanks for sharing!

 

Nothing yet, and no messages from the "buyer". Looks like a scam attempt at this point.

 

Alright SCAM UPDATE!

Today I received this email from the "buyer"

"Dear Sir,

I received notification on the payment of $69,600.00 was mistakenly send to your account from our financial department. They issued another payment along with your payment due to the instruction of your payment and another company payment forwarded to them.

Due to erroneous blunder made by the financial department they issued your payment and the other company payment together as we have other business with the company, in a single payment $69,600.00 forwarded into your account, instead of $5,598.00 as agreed

Kindly acknowledge the payment of $69,600.00 as soon as it gets to your account so we could sort out the differences and also proceed.

Sorry for the inconveniences this time and hope we do more successful deal in the future.

Best regards,

Abdullahi."

The obvious angle here is that its a "deposit disguised as a wire" scam.

They will ask me to wire them "back" the money, I will be stupid enough to actually wire them $69K (which I cannot get back). And a couple of days later the $69K deposit they sent to me will bounce (probably a check that never had any actual funds), and the issuing bank will reverse the deposit, leaving me out $69K.

From my understanding of this scam, I should just leave the money pat as it is, and let it be reversed out on it's own.

But dang it, wouldn't it be awesome if I could counter-scam these b@st@rds.

 

Man, you could buy 69% of a 2915 dial for that!

 

Brilliant! I never knew that and am thankful to have read this today

 

Yes, because if someone in finance accidentally sends $69,600 to the wrong account, you send an email. That's exactly how it works.

You should contact the proper authorities (Dubai, Abu Dhabi?) - from what I understand, they take matters such as this very seriously.

 

First, this guy is in neither location, he is in an internet cafe somewhere in Nigeria. Second, the authorities won't do jack. They are overwhelmed with these. I was party to an extremely elaborate, international wire scam involving key loggers, forged invoices, spoof domains and the "authorities" have still not even called any of the parties back. When you call they FBI, they won't even take your call...you are directed to a website. When you report the case on the website you get an autoresponder that says thanks for reporting, but we receive thousands of reports a day and you will probably never hear from us.

Bottom line, wires are no longer safe unless you know the sender. You should verbally confirm the details on both ends before sending. Do not just email wire instructions and wait. A phone call is now prudent with both the sender and the bank to confirm all the details. This has grown beyond simple scams to organized crime, and the level of sophistication is staggering. I realize the OP had a different issue, but be wary of any wire transfer today.

 

Obviously, if they're not in the UAE, you can't do jack. If they for some reason are, then I'm not talking about your local authorities but the authorities in the UAE. But I assume you're most likely correct.

 

Would be funny if you were able to.

 

What if I told them that I will gladly give them back their "money", but I must meet them at a specific US bank branch, since my accounts "cant do outbound wire transfers" and "I dont have a checkbook" (I will of course not show up, or better yet I can bring cops)

 

If you were to do that. I would bring authorities. Because it would be nice to have one less scammer out in the world.

 

I like Chase Quickpay

 

Every one of these bastards uses the same flowery language.