Qchex Is Now Gochex

Wave of check and money order fraud seems to sweeping across the U.S. and the internet at large. Most of these scams involve people replying to classified ads for "check cashing"jobs. They are told they will be paid to deposit large checks into their bank account and then immediately wire the money via Western Union. Of course the check ends up being fraudulent and they're out the money that they wired. (Usually $5,000 or more.)

There is another type of fraudulent money order going around that I haven't seen information about online yet. Yesterday I received a suspicious check in payment for an expensive item I was selling on Ebay. It was printed out on normal paper, supposedly through a service called Qchex.com, and there seemed to be a typo on the check. (The dollar sign was printed over the last digit in the check number as seen.) The payer was "MDC Diamonds", and the digitized signature printed on the check was from a Daniel XXXXX. My customer was not a diamond dealer nor named Daniel. He was supposedly in Canada, though he emailed me this morning stating that he would like the item shipped to Germany. This alone would be a warning sign, even without the suspicous check. I then looked up the IP address in his email header. Sure enough, he was emailing me from Indonesia.

For those who may not be aware, Indonesia is currently the capital of the world for credit card scams and general internet payment fraud. Most auction sellers on Ebay will not ship to Indonesia on principle. It's just too risky. The mysterious thing about this is the number of people that seem to be involved in this particular scam that targeted me. The person doing the communication with potential targets is in Indonesia but there are apparently drop of points for the desired merchandise in Canada and Germany. I can't possible be the only one targeted by this group. They are probably going after a number of sellers on online auctions as well as internet stores.

I can't be sure if the check is completely forged, and depositing it will earn me the $20 bounced check fee, or if someone's qchex.com account was hacked, and thus the check might actually be cashable, though at some New York diamond merchant's expense. I'm betting that it is the former.

Other obvious points that anyone who buys or sells anyting on Ebay or Yahoo Auctions (or uses Citibank, Paypal, or Bank One) is that none of these businesses will ever send you an email in which they ask you to click on a link to verify your account. I probably get a forged email every day telling me that my account has been attacked and I need to click below and verify my personal information. Lately these emails have become more sophisticated and professional-looking. They can make it look like you are clicking on a link to Citibank, and hide the real URL that you are visiting. One of my relatives who buys on Ebay fell for this scam and clicked on a link from a scam email. She entered her username and password, but got suspicious when it asked for her mother's maiden name, credit card number, and social security number. She called me up right after that, and was luckily able to change her password before her account got hijacked. That incident really made me realize how easy it is to steal passwords from people online. Beware of fraudulent emails!

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