green basketweave paper, and printed out the new check. He forged the two signatures it required using two different pens. He needed the number stamp so he could reconstruct the ink of the check number in red. Using an Exacto knife, he cut the check out of the 81⁄2 x 11 sheet so he could bring it down to the appropriate size. Once he was finished, he ended up with a check for $3O,333.33, which he felt much better reflected the value of his services.
He deposited the check by opening up an account at Bank Boston. They told him there was a five-day hold period, and he said that was no problem. He didn't return for twelve days, at which time he withdrew all but a hundred dollars. Sixty-two days later, an auditor at Forbes caught the forged check, but by then it was a little late. The writer then crafted a story for Forbes about check fraud, in which he revealed the details of his own little charade. Forbes put a picture of the fraudulent check on its cover.
This little caper is called scanning, and it's one of the most popular forms of forgery and certainly the simplest. Scanning started to emerge as a problem in the early 1990s, and it has really caught on significantly in recent years.
In Springfield, Mass., a man changed a $3.00 refund check from L.L. Bean into one for $30,000. Then he changed a $2.39 bakery refund check for stale cinnamon buns to one for $15,552.39. In North Carolina, a well-dressed young man convinced an automobile dealer to accept a cashier's check for $50,000 from Wachovia Bank, in exchange for a new Mercedes 300SC. It happened to be six in the evening, when the bank was closed, but the dealer was not about to turn away a nice piece of business. Little did he know that the cashier's check had originally been made out for $5.00 and altered to $50,000, and that before the bank opened the next day the car would be two states away, with fake license plates and a new paint job.
DO YOUR BANKING WITH THE IRS
And sometimes, you don't even need all that technology. For example, people always seem to require extra cash around tax time, and criminals are no exception. So they get it from you. Say you've had your tax returns prepared and, like most of us, you owe the IRS some additional money. For argument's sake, let's say it's $1,500. You sign your return, insert a check made out to the IRS for $1,500, and drop it in the mail. As far as you're concerned, that ends the pain for another twelve months.
Not quite. The pain actually just doubled. Your package was "lifted" while in transit to the IRS. Envelopes to the IRS are common targets because of where they're going. The check was removed and the rest of the return trashed. With a few pen strokes, the thief easily altered the check so that it was made out to a Mrs. Smith, and deposited it into a fake account. All he did was change "IRS" to "MRS" and add "Smith" to the payee line. Not only did you lose the $1,500, but you still owe the IRS another $1,500, plus late charges. Talk about double taxation.
WHAT TO DO
The easy solution is to fill out the entire payee line. If you had written "Internal Revenue Service" instead of "IRS," this scam would not have worked.
SURE, YOU CAN TRY THIS AT HOME
Today, forgers drive around in industrial parks where there are big office buildings, and look into those large mailboxes standing in the parking lot. They'll tell you that five years ago, they used to have to fish into those mailboxes, sending a line down and yanking the mail out, but they don't have to anymore. Today, they drive up at a little after five in the afternoon, and there's so much mail stuffed inside that it's literally flowing out of the box. They just reach out of the car window and scoop it up. Any reasonable quantity of mail will always contain at least one envelope with a window in it that says, "Pay to." Inside is a check payable to a construction company or a public relations firm - it doesn't really matter who it's addressed to. It's not going to them anymore.
The odds are it's a laser check, and that's just what forgers want. Just about every company in America, no matter how big or