Police warn of ‘bounced cheque’ fraud

Fraudsters posing as customers have been targeting local businesses in a bounced cheque scam.
The Royal Gibraltar Police released a warning to businesses following a number of reports.
The scammer typically sends a cheque for payment of services requested at greater value than the quote. Then the business will be informed of the ‘mistake’ and the fraudster will ask for a refund of the added cash.
The business will then refund the money but will later find out that the initial cheque was either a fake or the account has insufficient funds.
The result is that the business is defrauded by the amount of money ‘refunded’.
The RGP confirmed that the fraudulent cheques originate from outside of Gibraltar and the fraudsters contact details are not local.
“It is often in these cases that the accounts used have been opened with false documents and that the contact details are untraceable,” an RGP statement said.
“This greatly hampers the ability of law enforcement agencies to track down suspects and bring culprits to justice. It also hampers the retrieval of funds.”
“Police advice is to question all transactions and if the request is strange, out of the ordinary or raises any suspicions confirm everything before making a transfer. Furthermore, in this particular type of fraud check with your bank that the funds have actually cleared before accepting any request for a bank transfer.”
The RGP encourage the public to report this type of crime to the Economic Crime Unit at ecu@royalgib.police.gi.