Josh First's Blog

Avoiding payment scams is easy

Last year, some local person took a picture of a check I had written to a local business, and they used that picture to create several fake checks written against my bank account. Because I bank locally with a relatively small bank owned by local people I know and trust, and because I have personal relationships with the bank staff, the forged/fake scam checks were caught right away.

“I looked at that check, and then the next one, and the next one, and just I knew that there was no way that Josh First was writing them. They are ridiculous on their face. I mean…flowers and gourmet cat food? No! No way. I knew that is not Josh. Chainsaws, yes, could be, I could be fooled by that if someone tried it, but gourmet cat food, no, flowers hell no“, said the local bank branch manager with a big smile.

Because the bank manager knows me and my business personally, he was easily able to discern the fake checks from real ones. He saved me a lot of heartache. And so I recommend to you that you use your local banks, that are owned and run by local people. Unlike the big banks like Chase, these local people get to know you, know your face, and are accountable and connected to the community around them.

A month later I got a call from a sweet and very distressed woman in Arizona, who had shipped off five thousand dollars worth of product from her small business based on a check written in my name. No, I assured her, I had nothing to do with it. I had no need for marketing products, and certainly not her particular products. This nice lady and I had a long conversation about how much America has changed in our adulthood, and not for the better. She said the scam had really hurt her financially.

Fast forward almost a year and I recently got a call from a nice young man in Alaska. A check bearing my business name had been used to purchase thirty-five hundred dollars of beauty salon hair and nail products from his friend in Florida, and the proceeds had been sent to Alaska to help him purchase a home there. Only days after he had deposited the check in his account was he informed that the check was bad, and that in fact he did not have the money. His friend in Florida was cheated out of her salon products.

I would say the common thread I have seen across all of these check scams is that the person getting scammed does not really look into the check they have received. For example, why would a buyer of beauty salon products in Florida pay with a check from a business in Pennsylvania that does land and timber work? This obviously makes no sense, and the young man admitted it.

And when I spoke with the nice lady in Arizona last summer, she too admitted that this same issue had given her pause. To which I asked her “Why didn’t you call us with your question before taking the check? We could have easily protected you from committing this mistake.”

Scams are everywhere: Email scams asking for money, phone calls asking for money, malware and phishing scams by email and text (DO NOT CLICK ON THEIR CONTENTS and links), phone calls about getting a low cost mortgage on your penis enlargement, updating your nonexistent home warranty/ extended car warranty/ computer warranty etc etc etc. We are inundated in this garbage.

You have to care about yourself enough to stay on guard and defend your interests. One little mistake can cause you a lot of grief and cost you a lot of money.

The best ways to protect yourself from being victimized are: 1) Ask yourself if this is a service or product I really have? 2) Is this phone call or email a normal way for a real bona fide service provider to communicate? 3) Why is there a company name from far away on this check? And you can always call that company whose name is on the check and ask them if they wrote the check.

Had that happened in the most recent scam, I would have said “I have nothing against dudes who use girl makeup, but I will also say that I am the last man on Planet Earth who would do so, and so there, you have your answer: The check is bad.”

You just gotta ask a question or two if you want to stay out of scam trouble.