I looked into this when I sold my Morgan. I had a few similar offers so spent a little time googling scenarios
One fraud revolves around identity theft. With a name and address (possibly from a discarded utility bill put in the recycling) the fraudster will set up fake bank accounts and may even deposit a small sum of money enabling and overdraft facility and credit/debit card to be obtained. These are the used to buy high value items (cars/watches/jewellery) which are then resold at a much lower price but produce ‘clean’ money. Hence the term ‘laundering’. It’s also a method of disposing of large sums of ‘dirty’ cash (drugs/theft/another scam).
Either way the seller unwittingly becomes part of an illegal chain of events and is at significant risk of having the payment returned to the victim (bank who provided the initial funds) and has to make an insurance claim to recover the value of the fraudulently sold item which may or may not be successful.
Other scenarios are considerably more complicated.
Ps. My bank allows me to have several accounts so I have one account (which I call a transit account) specifically for receiving payments that may be less than 100% trustworthy. It carries a very small balance and any payments made into this account are transferred as soon as they become available into one of my regular accounts. I set this account up so that it can only receive inward payments and can only transfer out to specific accounts and the outward transfer is also password protected.
Last edited by Grumpy2; 30/05/23 07:17 AM.
