Scam texts to business

[Edays]

Howdy, small business owner here.

This has happened a couple of times now. I will get a text from someone wanting to book an appointment for 5 people. They say they will pay in advance by check, and I’m to keep the fee for service, plus a tip, and forward the rest via Apple Pay to the driver who will be bringing them to the appointment. They have to pay me by check “for record keeping purposes”. Their “accountant” sends a crappy scan of a fake check and tells me to deposit it and send a screenshot.

Hopefully no one falls for this but since I’ve gotten this text a few times maybe it has worked on someone. They always ask me to ‘kindly’ send them a screenshot when I deposit the check.

[Kitty La Gore]

Hi Edays,

Good on you for recognizing the advanced fee fraud! You can do others a big favor by posting the scammer's details at our sister site, Scamwarners (dot) com and that way when people search for the phone number or content of the text messages, they'll see the warning about it.

[bware419ers]

Hopefully no one falls for this

Welcome here and thank you for sharing. Kitty provided the best advice. In response to your quoted section, unfortunately, this (or similar versions) does work. I know at least five business owners who have lost money to this type of scam.