Hello, I recently received instant messages from someone who had an offer.
The offer is like this: You get a check about every week or so from somewhere in the U.S. you cash the check at your bank, and then from each check you take a fixed amount of money for yourself, and the rest you send to wherever they tell you through western union. Is this fraud? Is it even legal to do that?

Its not fraud it's a scam.

What if you actually get the check?

The check will turn out to be no good and you will be out the money.

It is a scam. It is a scam.

Internet Check Cashing Scam
Advance fee fraud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SCAM!

Don't you watch TV ( this was even on Oprah) or read any interent scams
www.scopes , or even talk to people on the street.

This is the largest and biggest and most well known fraud going today.
It works in varoius methods, collecting money for business and so on.

You will get checks, that are either just bad, or nromally fake. So you depoist the money, wait a few days, till it "clears" but then in about 2 week to a month it turns out to be a fake check, and comes back,

You then have to pay the bank back or they press criminal charges.
They had people on Opah that had been charged.

Why would they need you to cash this check for them?? Why?
I can mail a check to any county in the world and the person in that county can go to their bank and cash my check ( or deposit it in their bank)

If they just want the book keeping, there are bank factoring companys, that do this for 3 percent of the check, they bill and collect the money on recievables. So why would they pay you, someone they don't know more than 3 percent that they can get from large companies that are insured and bonded.

OK does anyone know exactly where I can report this immediately??

Where do you live?

Can you verify if a check is good, before you cash it or deposit it?? How??

Dude This Is A Scam!

What Are You Not Getting?

Nope, no way to check it out, that is the beauty of their scam, that account can be real, there can be money in it, but the check would be a fake check on someone else's account, so when they get their statement in a month they see a fraud check and turn it in, that way it can take 4 to 6 weeks.

If they want you to send them the money by western union then it is a scam, ALWAYS, every time, they use western union since they can get their money anywhere in the world almost so you can't track them and once the money is picked up, you are out that money forever.

You can report this to your local police, to the interment provider where you hear from them out of. But you will find they will end up being in south america or africa somewhere that the law will never get them.

I get it. I get it.
And I live in Washington state.

How to Report a Scam

This is information on reporting a scam.

Have you already sent them money, normally they will pick it up right away, but you may want to check with western union if it is not picked up if you can cancell the transaction.

But if you already sent the money, you need to report it, report it to your local police and go into your bank and close your account.
The reason I say this, as soon as it bounces, they will freeze your account and take all the money in it at that time to cover that bad check,

So if you have checks out, think dozens of bounce checks.
You will still have to work out payment plan with the bank, but at least then you won't have a lot of bad checks to deal with also.

Well I haven't watched much TV in the past year because we don't have one. It might be unbelievable. So I've never come across news or things talking about that, and I've heard no one anywhere talking about that. So I didn't know until now that that type of fraud in particular existed. I knew about other ones through the internet, just not that type.
But now I know, and thanks a lot for any info you give me.

Fr. Chuck, they sent me a check. Which I have not seen yet, but it's supposed to be delivered tomorrow by ups. And it's the first one so I don't have history of sending them anything. So my question is if I get the check, can I take it to the police to show them proof? Will it do any good?

Most of these scams are rotating shops. These people disappear into the night sort of a thing. Its good for the federal government to track it but I don't know how much your local police dept can do about anything.