I thought I was onto some clever application of the “duck test” for the title of this post, about how “if it looks like a scam and quacks like a scam,” but I really couldn’t make it sound anything other than monstrously insane, so I dropped it and went with the title you see above.

Anyway, the old repayment scam has been explained a thousand times here, there and everywhere. You’re selling something on Craigslist (for example), and a buyer contacts you, usually from out of state. They send their payment, but instead of $200, it’s a cashier’s check for $3,200. “Cash it and use the extra for shipping, then wire the rest back to me,” they say when you contact them.

What happens next is fairly predictable: you cash the check, send the item, wire the excess money (thousands of dollars) to someone, then find out a week later that it was a counterfeit check and that you’re on the hook for the loss caused to your financial institution.

But did you know that scammers also target businesses with the same tactic?

And if you’re a business owner, you might fall for it because what might strike you as suspicious during a private sale might seem less so in a business context. I’ve heard of several cases where retail businesses, attorneys and rental property owners have been victimized by this scam.

However, the principle applies in every context, whether in a person-to-person or a business transaction: if someone sends you a cashier’s check and tells you to cash it and wire money back to them, you’re almost always dealing with a con artist.