PNC Bank/ Fifth Third Cleared fraudulent check then reversed deposit without any notifications Columbus, OH Nationwide

"Apparently the check was fraudulent."

- Understatement of the Century. 

Let me tell you about your "job".

You applied for a "job" on-line.  You were contacted most likely either by Email or Text explaining that you will receive a check in the mail with further instructions.  Note that in some cases you may be called personally.

When you get the check, you are requested to go shop at a store of your choice(usually some "big-box" retailer), purchase an inexpensive item where you can use up to a set amount of funds from the check.  You are then directed to log onto a web site and write about your experience.  You are then told about the second part of  your "job".  Where they want to test something such as MoneyGram, a Pre-Paid card where they instruct you to take a certain amount of money from the check, with a $1600 check I am figuring anywhere from about $1200-$1300 and then purchase PrePaid cards or a Money Gram.  Once you do this you are instructed to call another person and give them the information.

These scammers will even tell you up front to wait for the check to "clear".  This is because they know that there are Federal Regulations that require the funds of a check to be released even if it hasn't really cleared  yet.   Unfortunatly, you are unfamilar with this and by the time you realize it is a fake check..they have the money and you are left having to pay the bank back.

Sound familar?

Now, yes you are 100% responsible for this because YOU are responsible for any check you deposit on your account.  If the check is fraudlent you are the one required to "make good" on it.  If you don't the bank can legally come after you, even taking you to court if necessary.  Yes, this may seem unfair to you, but it is totally within the bank's right for your failure to realize it is a fraudlent check.

Do you know why they could care less about the police report?  Because it doesn't matter.  In normal circumstances if a check is bad, you would go after the person that gave it to you..just as the bank is going after you.  However, these people gave you fake names, their phone(if they had one) is a throw-away cell phone or VoIP phone that can be anywhere in the world,  if they had an e-mail address or web site it was paid for by a stolen credit card, oh and they are not in the US.  All of this makes it next to impossible to find and why NO law enforcement agency will spend their limited resources even attempting to find them.

You keep going back to "well the bank verified the funds".  Yes, the funds may have been there but it was a FAKE check and most likely the moment it was deposited and the true account holder saw this $1600 check come through reported the fraud.  So just consider yourself lucky if you don't end up in jail because of this.

In the end these scammers played on your greed.  After all do you really think that you found a "goldmine" in a job that was going to pay you several hundred dollars for what probably amounted to barely an hours worth of work. 

So if you haven't figured it out by now, ANYTIME someone you don't personally know send you a check and asks you to deposit it and send them money you can guarantee it is a SCAM.  Regardless of how convincing they may seem.

Stop over using the word "issue".  The correct word is PROBLEM.  You can deposit any check you want and there's not a PROBLEM.  The check is then POSTED but the funds may not become available until it clears the original bank.  If you deposited the $1600 check, how can you overdraft the account unless you were using that money BEFORE it cleared?

What are you blaming the bank for??? This is a common scam!!! YOU are responsible for your account, not the bank!! AND NO I do not work for them.  This is on you.