A Salmon Arm, B.C.-area small business owner is speaking out and hoping to warn others to beware of cheque scams.
Andrew Freeman said he was targeted by scammers when trying to sell one of his business’ trucks online and feels lucky the fraud was foiled.
Freeman said in late March he posted one of his welding trucks for sale online and someone offered to buy it for over $21,000.
“The way that they had contacted me and did everything it was so legit,” said Freeman.
“I spoke to them on the phone and they were going to get someone to come out with a trailer to load up my truck.”
Freeman said the cheque was mailed to him with priority overnight delivery, but when he went to cash it at a TD Bank location in Kamloops a teller noticed an issue.
“The teller at the front caught the cheque. It kind of felt weird to her so she took it to the back and got it processed and here it turned out to be a scam cheque,” Freeman said.
However, how real the fraudulent cheque looked surprised Freeman. He said it even had the name of a real business on it. The business confirmed to Global News it had nothing to do with issuing the cheque to Freeman.
“With the technology that they are having out there to build these kinds of cheques that look like that it’s pretty scary because you can get ripped off pretty fast,” Freeman said.
TD was the bank listed on the cheque and Freeman believes taking it there helped catch the scam attempt.
“For some reason, I just decided to take it to TD and get it checked out and I’m blessed that way that I caught it,” he said.
For its part, the bank said this story shows that its teams are well-trained to spot and prevent fraudulent transactions.
TD said in a statement it recommends when receiving payment for a sale or work completed that people don’t accept cheques, but instead use a guaranteed form of payment like cash, a bank draft, or wire transfer.
That’s exactly what Freeman did when he eventually sold his vehicle for cash.