I came up with this easy and effective trick to avoid scammers from stealing your identity and draining your bank checking account when you have the desire to receive wired funds. Bank Checking Account Fraud has a variety of methods but this one is very common. A typical fraudster will contact you with a desire to purchase something from you. You could be a business selling goods or you may be trying to sell your old appliance online on a website such as Craigslist.com. Someone contacts you and offers to buy your product sight unseen. I remember selling a used fridge after rehabbing my home and a person from London emailed that they wanted to purchase it from me. They wanted to pay for shipping as well. Sounded fishy and it was. They wanted to wire me money! Sounds great! Not so fast!
They typically would ask for bank information (account and routing number, name, address, etc.). If you provide them with everything they ask for, they could in turn produce counterfeit checks that could drain your account in days.
Here is the way to avoid it. Use or open a new savings account. Using your savings account will raise a huge red flag to your bank when the bogus check comes into their account. You see, you cannot write a check on a savings account. So the funds will never leave your bank. Your bank may call you to let you know that the fraud was attempted. But the funds will never leave your account. And if the buyer is for real, then you will see the funds appear appropriately.
