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

[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.