Latvian scam?

[undyingking]

While I was away we had an inquiry from a person in Latvia who wanted to buy a game. He asked for our bank details so he could BACS the money across to us directly. My esteemed business partner, who was looking after this sort of thing in my absence, responded by asking why he couldn't use a credit / debit card / Paypal like everyone else? We've not heard back from that yet...

Maybe I'm being paranoid, but this screamed "SCAM!" to me. Not sure exactly what use our bank details would be to a scammer, though? After all we have the bank details of all our authors / affiliates etc, so we can BACS them their royalties and whatever, and I've not yet thought of a way to use that information to fleece them?

Comments

[adamsmithjr.livejournal.com]

I would say scam. Check out some of the Internet sites on the 419er scams. I forget what they can do with your bank details but they can have a go... If this guy is legit he should be able to produce another way of paying. Not worth the risk - in my humble opinion.

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

I have had trouble in the past with people using my company's bank details -- which are fairly public as a lot of our customers pay us by BACS -- to set up dodgy direct debits. Rather bizarrely they appear not to have actually given the organisations concerned any useful details (at least, they had given a nonexistent name/address to the only organisation who provided that to the bank when the bank requested it) so I can only imagine they were trying to cause money rather than actually scam us in any useful way. In any case I watch that account carefully and flagged the direct debits as dodgy straight away to the bank; I now have a note on the account that no direct debits are to be set up on that account without my explicit written instructions, which appears to have solved the problem.

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

"cause trouble" rather than "cause money", I mean.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_alanna/]

al_fruitbat explained this one to me recently (he was selling his car on e-bay). Apparently, they send you more money than they should, and ask you to refund the difference. Then they cancel their original money transfer (there's some strange ruling where international money transfers take longer than normal, and can be cancelled even if they've cleared...). They also get hold of your bank details when you reimburse them what they've 'accidentally' sent you.

I may have understood some of that wrongly.. I'm sure someone will correct me :)

[(Anonymous)]

I had that one. Offering a bank draft for £4000, which I could take my £700 from. Nigerian spelling too.