A friend just received a certified check for more than $10,000 the asking price of his boat advertised on Boattrader. The envelope was sent from the UK and there is a request to cash the check and send back the extra 10k to a third party agent representing the buyer. What is going on? I told him to give the certified check an instructions to the local law enforcement agency. Has anyone heard of anything like this before?

Its a SCAM.

I have heard of it. What often happens is the seller in this case sends the 10 grand back before the money clears because it is "certified" and guess what? He is out 10 big ones. Going to the authorities is smart. Good luck.

Never ending phishing!!! azsholes!

Kinda like the emails sent from africa saying that i need to set up an acct for a wire transfer and they will give me 15% for just setting up an acct.

We get calls at work all the time from unnamed printer/copier companies that ask for our make and model #'s and try to send heavily marked up parts that we didnt order....take money upon delivery type scam.

Similar thing happened to a friend of mine. He went as far as to deposit the check, just to see if it was real. It took a couple of weeks to come back as a bad check. Needless to say, he didn't send them anything. What sucks is that these jerks keep doing this stuff because somewhere out there some sucker loses his money often enough to keep trying. Going to the authorities is probably a total waste of time because they are always overseas in some scam ridden country like Nigeria.

Rene

run fast

Frame it

Scam???....Oh YEAH!!!! You bet!!!
BOING!!!!!....rubber check!!!!!
Say you were to deposit it, wait a little while for it to clear, then mailed the excess back. For some reason the banks take a bit longer to cash an overseas check. Once they find out it's bogus they'll withdraw the funds from your account. You'll be out a 20K boat, 20 K for the check plus 10K in cash that you sent, and in some cases the boat will be on it's way so you'll have heavy shipping charges to get it overseas.
Never accept a check for more than the asking price.

New scam going around involves American Express Gift Checks. A guy in Orlando received several thousand dollars worth of $500.00 checks. Deal was he should deposit them, mail a certain amount back, and keep the rest. Just like the overpayment scheme. Guy was smart, he went to the American Express website and found the highest denomination gift check they sell is $100.00. TV news showed the guy holding the &500.00 checks. Sure looked real too.

Send him back $10k in Monopoly money and a pic of a boat and a note saying "this is as close to getting a boat as you will come with fake checks"