Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (I.P.) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters, and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, and legal marketing and development.

Still, here at Miletti Law®,we feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy, & distinctive content. Usually, this content is featured as videos posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

As the authoritative force in Employment Law, we are thrilled to continue creating content-filled videos that cover diverse areas of Labor Law to educate and deliver in a sense that only Miletti Law® can. In this regard, this blog introduces you to yet another training video titled “Guidance on Fraudulent Checks, Cashier Checks & Other Scams!” By way of backdrop, it is most likely that you have encountered a fake check, sometimes even a certified one, but still fake. With fake checks on the rise, we have received several and, consequently, got better at catching them. So, what do you do when you get a fake check? How do you even identify a fake check? While these are some of the concerns we have attempted to address, we have dwelt on fake and fraudulent checks and fake and fraudulent certified checks. The latter has thrown us a bit off because it is hard to imagine that they would be easily faked as well.

That being said, let us get down to it.

The FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) is well aware of this situation and has often encountered the issue in what we can refer to as “get rich quick” schemes, such as the guy from Sudan who had a $9 billion check. It also happens in lottery schemes, online auctions, and marketplaces, such as Facebook marketplaces. You may have seen someone on Facebook saying they are selling this or that for a certain amount. Then, they ask you to buy instantly and send it as a gift on PayPal or Venmo. While this takes place electronically, getting a certified check will always throw you off the hook. Additionally, it also happens in mystery shopping, where people are solicited in the events only to find out that they have been scammed.

From our point of view, we find this most common in Escrow accounts (such as when buying domain names and source codes), normal purchases (someone wants to buy your item, sends you a check and asks you to retain your fees, you send the item, only to find that the payment check was fake).

Before we continue, let us have a possible scenario a lawyer like our own Vinny would encounter. You receive a solicitation email saying, Mr. Miletti, we are an investor with this big hedge fund and would like to purchase this property. As a lawyer, we would like you to facilitate this transaction and have your legal eyes on it in drafting the necessary documents. Since the property is being sold at $900,000, we will give a check for $1 million. You will need to deposit that check in your bank account, and within three days after maturation, we will give you an A-OK to send the $900,000 and keep your $100,000 for yourself. Normally, you would also go for such a sweet deal; clean purchase, the right job for a lawyer.

When that check comes in the mail, you take it, confirm that it is a certified bank check (it is crazy because these ones are being easily forged, too), and put it in your bank account. After a couple of days, you find that the money is actually there and get very excited. Since nothing is a problem, you transfer the money but automatically get screwed because your bank will flag your account if you have a substantial amount of money. You would have to kiss that money goodbye because it will have to either be taken or the bank will be a fraud on its part.

When it comes to fraudulent checks, the initial thought would be that all checks have to be FDIC-insured for up to, say, $200,000. Through Mr. Miletti, we have communicated to multiple banks, including his own, and found that as a response to this issue, they will take fraudulent checks from your account and give your account the NSF (non-sufficient funds) status, a penalty or some other disciplinary action and then move on. Talking of the penalty, imagine what happens if you have a larger amount, like $1 million, in your account. It is a sad fact that no matter the situation, if someone sends you a fraudulent check of $200,000, and you send, for example, $100,000 that this person asked you to, then the back will automatically confiscate the balance from your account without hesitation.

We are yet to hear a bank saying that it has a way to prevent this from happening. We can say that, for whatever reason, technology in the banking sector is not fast enough to go ahead and catch issues with fraudulent checks and the forging of certified checks. We are still shocked by this! Yet, banks are shielded and protected from the FDIC, but you, as an individual, do not enjoy the same protection. No bank, not even the largest ones, will ever give back your money, no matter what!

So, now that the FDIC does not protect you, how do you plan for such contingencies? Well, we have a list of tips, but as a general rule, you may start by not throwing your cards on the table and accepting to take such a risk. Personally, Mr. Miletti will tell you that, despite having received such checks, he has never fallen fool to forgeries of this kind and definitely never fell into their trap. The only hitch was that even certified checks can now be easily forged as well.

To start with, whenever you get a check, whether certified or not, as well as regular checks, wait for seven good days before you even think about depositing it in your account. Do not make any plans to pay it out or use it to pay bills; just stuff it under your pillow and wait for seven days. Generally, checks take at least five days to be detected by banks and, thus, despite the amount of money in question, waiting is a risk worth taking than being smoked.

Next, you should remember the old adage that “when the deal is too good, think twice.” If someone solicits you, gives you an irresistible deal, sends you a check without asking you for spelling checks and spelling errors, and signs papers with full trust and no debate, you should take a step back and think again. It is common sense that people are not happy about spending their money anyhow; most of them would just want to lowball you. The fact is that we are living in a crooked world!

Another thing you should do is cross-examine whether the check was drafted by a bank and a legitimate one, for that matter, since there are always red flags in fake checks. We have literally seen physical checks come in, and instead of something like BOA, the check would read BOH. It is also advisable to verify any check that you come across. It would only take a minute to call a bank that purportedly drafted the check and ask if they have it in their system. Some banks will have you come in, but you do not have to. Others are nice enough to verify and address your concerns through a phone call.

As another tip, you should evaluate the source of the check. Yes, do some digging into who sent it to you. At times, forgers intentionally omit a word, number, or a letter in, say, a company name. For instance, instead of an uppercase “L,” a forger will type “I” because it looks like a lowercase “L.” What about the email address through which the check was sent to you? Does it look professional or fishy? It does not hurt to use Google to verify the names of people and companies to make sure that they are spelled right in email addresses and on checks. In fact, most companies have their email addresses online, so you just need to confirm and verify.

Still, it would be best if you considered why these people decided to solicit you and how fit you are as a recipient. If you do not have advertisements online or do not offer services that are known online, then you are probably a forgery target and will soon be a victim if you do not take precautions. If you are “nobody,” no offense with the word because everyone is someone in their own capacity, and the CEO of who knows where is emailing you a check, then you are probably being scammed.

Additionally, it would help if you also crosschecked where the check came from. Check where it was mailed from and confirm the stamp of the post office through which it was mailed. While it is normally stamped on the front of the document, crosscheck the date. However, stamps can also be faked and, thus, do not just get satisfied because the check might have been mailed from a totally different location. It is bewildering that it could even come from another country.

Scammers are artists, and some can be very good at it! With the advancement of technology, artists have been able to fake watermarks and other key features that are known to be found on legitimate documents. This means you should know what a legitimate check should look like, especially from different banks.

Another thing you should check closely entails the instructions. If you are given very specific and detailed instructions that you should do this at this time without failure, you should not just sit and relax. From experience and the information we have gathered so far, we have realized that almost every scammer will ask you to do X in exactly four business days. Whether it is a check, they will ask you to deposit it within four days. The reason is that they start threatening to sue you on the third day, and on the fourth day, they expect you to send it out, but the check does not clear until the fifth day. This is very characteristic of almost every check fraud. Then, the language used should also make you raise an eyebrow. Usually, they tell you something like “deduct whatever you want, no problem, and I do not care as long you will send the amount we have agreed. Trust this, no one, not even Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, Springfield’s most powerful and richest citizen, will even use such a language. Nobody does that!

Through this video, we hope that we have armed you with key information on how to deal with a mailed check, particularly if you suspect it is fraudulent. Always let your client understand that if they are going to go ahead with soliciting you, then they will have to wait for seven days until the check clears. This is very crucial in protecting yourself. In case you get a fraudulent check and someone was trying to defraud you, then you need to file an IC3 (Internet Crime Complaint Center) complaint. At Miletti Law®, we file endless IC3 complaints when we encounter these issues. As usual, please, feel free to view our video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aPpq_QuLOc.

As we continue hammering on new stuff daily, stay tuned for more educative videos, inspiring training, & legal advice. In the interim, if there are any questions or comments, please let us know at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.