I recently had an encounter with a resourceful craigslist scammer who sent me a check for more than my price (selling an old computer) and tried to convince me to wire the surplus to him/her thru Western Union. The check was a fraud, of course, but if I had deposited it and then wired the money without waiting for it to clear, I would have been scammed for a couple thousand bucks, as apparently several of the other 25+recipients of these bad checks had done. This was my first encounter with social engineering, and I was surprised to find myself actually considering depositing the check, as if there was any chance at all that it was good…
In a more rational moment, it struck me that with a false ID they could have withdrawn the money anywhere in the world and certainly outside the reach of US law enforcement, through the magic of our global payments network and Western Union.
It’s natural to assume that we sort of know who we’re dealing with, but thanks to the power of the Internet, we often have no idea. Flat world indeed!
