Most cons are pretty easy to figure out over the internet, this one however is not. Here's how it works.

You put a high priced item up for sale on ebay or anywhere on the internet. In the case of my brother it was a car. He put one of his corvettes up for sale and within a few days he received an offer for it. They haggled a little and finally settled on a price. So far it's like any other sale of a car.

Once the price was settled a cashier's check was then to be sent to my brother and then once received the car could be picked up. Again very normal. Here's the scary part, the cashier's check these people are using are fakes. Well sort off. You see the new scam is these people buy $100 cashier checks, somehow "wash them" and then make them out for 20k or more. So looking at them they have the seal, the watermark, everything.

Luckily my brother for some reasn had a feeling about the person he was dealing with and luckily was friends with his bank manager. As he was going to just pop this cashiers check into his account, the manager was there and they were talking and my brother just happen to say" could you do me a small favor and see if this cashier's check is good". Well it took over an hour for the manager on the phone to all sorts of people to finally figure out that indeed it was good but not for 25k but for 100 bucks. Boom a SCAM.

The scam didn't stop there however, that night my brother gets another e-mail from the guy. He writes that he is sorry but he intended to buy this car for his wife but she suddenly has become seriously ill and would like to not purchase the car now since the medical problems and cost blah blah blah, BUT however seeing that my brother was inconvienced he could keep 10% of the check for his troubles if he just sent a cashiers check back for covering 90% of the check sent. This is the scam. They never intended to buy anything, they just want to send out sort off bogus cashiers check and get you to actually send them back good ones.

The topper on this is even though my brother caught it in time, he took it to the police and both on the local level and federal level they seemingly couldn't be bothered by this. So its basically up to us to watch our own asses cause these people are getting away with it.

Just thought you should know, don't even accept things as seemingly safe and secure as cashiers checks because they are now being " washed" and forged.