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We Infiltrated a Counterfeit Check Ring Now What?
- dustymcp 5y agoChecks are pretty much outfased here the only way to actually cash one is in the bank, and even then you might have a hard time if its foreign.
- irrational 5y agoAny thoughts as to why USPS et al. are apparently not pursuing this?
- mschuster91 5y agoFedEx is a private company, only the USPS has actual law enforcement (fun fact: they're the oldest federal law enforcement!). There are three reasons I can guess why at least the USPIS hasn't picked it up... they're overworked (and understaffed), the reports haven't made it past the gatekeepers (=been binned because it was too confusing), or there is an ongoing investigation that likely has been compromised now.
- tialaramex 5y agoThere will be a "cut-out" I'm naming them Steve, between the scam victims and the actual bad guys. So postal investigators can put hours of work in and tie back a bunch of cheques to Steve from Florida, and they go to Steve's house and Steve quickly admits that yeah, he sent the cheques. But Steve is getting paid $100 per week to send dozens of cheques, and Steve is so dumb his only contact "up the chain" is to somebody named "Bx$cash$$" on Telegram who told Steve it's a legitimate business venture. Steve is completely sure Bx$cash$$ is a 20-something woman from Utah, but the investigators aren't morons unlike Steve so they guess immediately that's a stock photo, and Bx$cash$$ has almost certainly never set foot on any soil with extradition to the US. Dead end. Could they charge Steve with crimes? Yeah, and I guess if they're frustrated or Steve was obnoxious and unco-operative they will. But he's a dead end, there is no route to Bx$cash$$ whoever that might be, through Steve, and so long as America is a land of morons who dream of being billionaires there will be more Steves so why even bother?
- rocqua 5y agoWhy would the USPS not simply block the letters, or go to Steve and tell him "stop sending illegal checks". Or add a letter to the outgoing letters saying "This letter almost certainly contains a counterfeit check. Don't cash it and then send on part of the money." Even if you never arrest the people behind it, you can frustrate their efforts to the point where it is no longer effective for them.
- orf 5y agoCheques? In 2021? Next you’ll have me believing you can scrawl a signature to verify a card payment.
- ssss11 5y agoChecks are still big in the US, no?
- zinekeller 5y agoQuite. They're dwindling, but at a slower pace than other countries.
- orf 5y agoIn the UK they haven’t been completely phased out, but I haven’t seen a cheque or a cheque book in the last 22 years. In 2019 only 51k paper cheques where used. That is to say, other countries have already done it. 1. https://newseventsinsights.wearepay.uk/media/e1mdcljg/pay-uk-annual-summary-payment-statistics-2019.pdf https://newseventsinsights.wearepay.uk/media/e1mdcljg/pay-uk...
- nicoburns 5y agoThe only times I've seen cheques in recent years are birthday presents from grandparents. I think they're still quite widely used by older people.
- tialaramex 5y agoYou have, quite understandably, misunderstood that document. What's actually going on there are still about 250k paper cheques but that document was generated during the period when they were consolidating from an older system which actually cared about physical pieces of paper to ICS, an "Image Clearing System" ie banks scan the cheque and work with just image data. The American victims in the HN linked story already have image clearing, that doesn't fix anything except it saves the banks a small amount of money. The document shows volumes dwindling at two legacy paper cheque handling organisations C&CCC and BBCCL because those firms literally no longer exist today, the document was produced by Pay UK, their successor in practice, which replaced their paper processes with images. But end users still write and receive physical cheques, it's just that banks don't want to spend money on physically moving cheques. The actual volume of cheques stayed at around 250 000 per year, average value of a cheque about £1500 (so "Buy a used car" money, but not "Buy groceries" money or "Buy a house" money) and total value about £400M (or £400 billion if the obvious typographical error in the column headings is true...). I expect data for 2020 will be very different, due to the pandemic, but that document is for 2018 and 2019. Cheques are still gradually going away in the UK, I didn't write a cheque in the past five years and most of my accounts have no way to draw cheques against them. But that document isn't the evidence you thought it was.
- sime2009 5y agoTIL: Americans spell "cheque" as "check".
- mnw21cam 5y agoYeah, also, most of the world used to pay a bill using a cheque. The Americans have to do everything backwards, and they pay a check using a bill.
- Olreich 5y agoIdk, I pay my water bill using a check. I think it’s just restaurants that use “check” to mean bill.
- Bayart 5y agoAnd get a load of this one : the English spell chèque as "cheque" ! ;)
- ncmncm 5y agoIf you doesn't use 'em, you doesn't get to name 'em.
- netizen-936824 5y agoBut they do use them? I'm not sure what your comment is supposed to mean.
- ncmncm 5y agoAmericans do. By report, Brits don't, anymore, IIUC.
- antihero 5y agoDoes anyone know if any way to transfer money is anything as good as Faster Payments Service in the UK? No limit, free for customer, transfers usually happen in <100ms (unless you have a shit bank that holds onto the money). Works 24/7. Actually cheaper to send people a penny with a comment attached than send an SMS :D It's a dream, other than the UX issue of not being very easy to set up new recipients as you need to know account details and generally there's a lot of friction to prevent fraud/mistakes (ie, it wouldn't be very good at a shop).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eythian 5y agoIn the Netherlands we often use Tikkie (and there are a few other apps that work the same.) With this, we use an app that generates a link that we send to the person using whatever method suits, that link takes them through their bank auth flow to make the payment, and you have it in a second or so. This is intended for person-to-person generally and you don't need their account number. All free. If it's something to be invoiced, the invoice will have their IBAN and a reference code to add, which works more like you describe.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoInstant wire transferts. They work in all europe I assume, limited to 1000€ a day, accross banks, no additional service required. The time is mostly taken by typing the IBAN in the first time.
- jpalomaki 5y agoIt’s called SEPA instant credit transfer. There can be some bank specific limits, but there’s no general upper limit. Payment is handled in seconds.
- ncmncm 5y ago> "Nigeria ... is among the world’s most corrupt" In practice, it means Nigeria has more retail corruption than most places. The most corrupt countries, by take, are the US and China, but it is concentrated at the top. In China, top-level violations of the law are tolerated as a carrot-and-stick to maintain support for the regime, whereas in the US, top-level corruption is instead made wholly legal. Russia and North Korea would like to be the most corrupt, but simply don't handle enough money.