The Overpayment Scam

Scam road sign picture

We were on the receiving end of one of these scams, fortunately for us we clocked onto it pretty early!

This is what happened…

  1. A man called ‘Ray Cherlin’ from Nu-Construction Ltd requested a quote for 100 Posters. We provided him with a quote that he said he would send off to the directors for approval. A couple of days later he wrote to us saying the quote has been accepted and to send over a Pro-Forma Invoice.
  2. Mr Cherlin then says he has forwarded the invoice over to his finance department to pay and the money will be in our account by Monday, sounds great! Right?
  3. We then kindly requested in the meantime if he could email over the artwork for the posters so we could set it all up in advance, but hear nothing back… Odd!
  4. Monday came around and we received this email…”Hi,

    Had just been informed by our Customer Account Officer  that the

    payment in amount of £87,000.00 ( instead of £98 as agreed ) would
    have been received on your given Account at your bank by now. This was
    done in error

    considering the  quotes I supplied him for the payment of total orders
    to be paid for while some were purchased from other companies. Need
    you to contact concerned persons in confirming the payment at your
    ends and get

    me informed upon its receipt for further directives to be then
    supplied. Sorry for the inconveniences this time and hope we do more
    successful purchases  in future. Do get an urgent response
    supplied.

    Best regards,

    Ray Cherlin.”

  5. This is where things got interesting, we then called up Nu-Construction and asked to speak to Ray, unsurprisingly he didn’t work there! The receptionist said she has been having none stop phone calls from businesses asking about ‘Ray Cherlin’ and that there have been loads of deliveries arriving at her office, strange!
  6. We checked our bank account on the Monday and nothing was in there, so we thought he was a scammer that got it wrong.
  7. Tuesday came around and I checked our account, to my surprise the £87,000.00 was in our bank account! Or was it? 
  8. Looking closely at our bank account, we noticed that even though the customer’s money was showing in our balance, it’s not actually cleared funds. The money paid in by the customer was actually a cheque paid in over the counter and is destined to bounce in five days time, giving Ray ample time to fleece us of our money (if we fell for it). Then we’d be left £87,000.00 out of pocket. (if we were lucky enough to have that much in there anyway!!)

We phoned our bank to double check everything and this seems to be happening on a daily basis, however this was the first time they had seen it done with these types of figures. Usually it’s around £500 – £1000, so guys please be aware of this type of scam and make sure you have your wits about you before you go about refunding the money. If you aren’t sure, call up your bank and they will advise you what to do next.

 

Our scammers details…

Ray Cherlin ( or Fortunato Moreno!)

[email protected].

Posing as Nu-Construction Ltd.