Internet Marketplace Safety
You listed your item on the internet, perhaps using eBay, it sold for the price you were looking for and now the time has come to get paid. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service http://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/ has been protecting the Postal Service, its customers and employees from criminal attack for over 200 years and they have a message for you:
“while the check may be in the mail, it does not always mean the money is in the bank. Identity thieves’ and other fraudsters may have noticed your item for sale and now want to pay you with a counterfeit check, commercial money order, or postal money order but the criminals method of payment leaves you empty handed. We can all avoid this scam by applying three basic principles: Stop. Look. Listen.”
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“Stop - Do not accept an overpayment for any sold item. You should advise the buyer to make payment in the correct amount. The most consistent and well known sign that fraud is about to occur is the buyers request that you accept an overpayment and provide the change.”
“Look - Make yourself familiar with the security features offered by various forms of payment. Postal Money Orders have easy to recognize security features that the criminals/counterfeiters have not been able to re-produce.”
“Listen - Take the time to understand your bank’s funds availability policy before you release your sold item to the buyer. Never release the merchandise to a buyer before the money clears the bank. One person’s check may take a couple of days to clear, another person’s may take several weeks. If you have been given a Postal Money Order and your feeling is that it may not be authentic, hold off on the sale and contact your local Postal Inspection Service Office http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/ContactUs.htm The Postal Inspection Service is the federal law enforcement arm of the United States Postal Service.”
You are covered by our $1 Million Total Service Guarantee from the moment you enroll. If in the unfortunate event your identity is misused while you are a LifeLock member, we will pay professionals to resolve the problem for you – up to $1 million!
We also want to give you a little information on Foreign Cashier’s Checks. Some folks that are selling high end/high priced items may receive a bid from someone in a foreign country, often in Africa and the supposed buyer may ask you to accept a foreign cashier’s check as payment. Some of these ‘buyers’ will request that you allow them to ‘overpay’ for your merchandise and wire them the overpayment through a service like Western Union or Money Gram. Please use extreme caution when accepting foreign cashier’s checks for your high priced item because foreign checks may take weeks or months to clear and may be counterfeit.
Also, some of these checks may look like they are from US banks but when you closely examine them you see that they include foreign country or city names. It may be best to never accept overpayments from buyers for items where the buyer wants you to send money back for overpayment.
