WINDFALL?

 

I received an email from an auction house yesterday telling me that our item had sold and that, after costs, $4000 would be deposited in my bank account. Suspecting a scam of some sort I accessed our bank account and, sure enough, $4,023 had been deposited.

I didn't reply to the email but instead, looked up the phone number of the auction house in Auckland and rang them asking if a (name of person who sent the email) worked for them. After a delay I was told that no such person worked there. I forwarded the email to a company email address the spokesperson gave me and then contacted my banks fraud department.

The bank confirmed that a payment had been made but that there did not appear to be sufficient information as to where the money came from. I sought, and was given, assurances that our money in various accounts was safe. They advised to do nothing further and wait until after the long weekend when the bank would contact me.

After this call I received another email from the auction house, this time from the financial controller (the previous person identified as an assistant financial controller) assuring me that there was no scam and that it was human error. He asked if we could return the money to them.

Shortly afterwards I received another email from the auction house, this time from a third person identifying as another assistant financial controller, providing their bank account details and asking me to process a payment back to them.

I did a Google search on the people involved and their connection to the auction house. The second and third people came up as being employees but the first one who initiated the correspondence did not. There is no record of any such person - not via Google searches anyway. I find this strange and will wait it out. I also added an extra level of security to our bank access.

Money scams, and I'm not saying that this is one, operate by dropping money into a person's account 'by accident' and then asking for the money back via a bank to bank transfer. How they make money is that they, as soon as the transfer is complete, somehow have the original deposit ($4000) cancelled so that the dupe - me in this case - would be out by that amount. They often do this during night hours or on national holidays. The email and bank deposit in this case happened just before 5pm (closing time) yesterday just before the Waitangi long weekend. As such there were enough warning bells for me to have responded the way I did. It might be seen to be overreacting but hey! Better to be safe than sorry.