Scammer wants details and credentials for my empty & unused bank account. What could go wrong?

Question

Some guy wants to use my bank account info (user and password) and he also wants me to ship my card he said with 0 dollars on it. It's a debit card and I don't really use the account anymore it has like a dollar something on it. He said:

Ok look I work at Chase as a financial director. Every 2 months my boss prints out at least 30,000 checks and he gives us what is left over do to customer appreciation and loyalty conducting good business. We are given 100 checks (used for given to follow customers at our branch) What we are going to do are give you payrolls that are worth $8,000 to $20,000 dollars of your choice. The value of the payrolls are generously large meaning my boss only ask for 60/40 or 50/50 and 80/20 of the payrolls. Okay but all my boss is doing is making direct deposits and authorize transactions I give him to put threw but the process works with all banks.

So if I basically let this guy do whatever he wants with the account is there any harm? Since I don't even use it? Also I don't think I have any overdraft on the account also it's a high school Chase account of that's important.

Answer 1

It's a scam.

Here are the many signs:

• The bank will never ask for your password. They can access your account without it.

• The bank will never use a customer's account for their own business. They have their own accounts.

• "Some guy" is not a bank employee. Bank employees are people that you meet at the bank.

• Banks do not hand out thousands of dollars for free to customers, especially customers with nothing in their accounts.

Even if you have no money in the account, this crook that you would give access to your account can do lots of illegal things in your name, such as writing bad checks, laundering money, running scams on other people through your account, etc.

If you have already given your account info to this person, you need to go to the bank immediately and inform them. Since you have no money in the account, you should close it.

Answer 2

First off, do not ever tell someone your password. Nobody who actually works for the bank would need your password to access the account.

Also, it may or may not be a scam (it almost assuredly is), but it is not a good idea to let someone use your bank account in your name. What if they use your account to launder money for illegal or terrorist activities? Then you would potentially face criminal charges.

There is no way this story makes sense. A company would never put their payroll in some random stranger's account; they would create an account in the company's name for handling payroll and use that.

Answer 3

Change the password on your bank account immediately. This is certainly a scam, and while they have your login info they can cause you even bigger problems. As soon as possible, contact your bank and let them know what happened.

If you look at the links in the "Related" list you'll see that this is a fairly common scam. It relies on the fact that some forms of fraudulent deposit take a while for the bank to detect. Sometime in the next month, the bank is going to find out that the deposit of $2500 is bogus, say from a bad check, forged money order, or some other fraudulent source. When that happens, the bank is going to undo the deposit, and demand that you make good any of the deposit that has been spent (including the $50 that has already gone to PayPal). The bank may also suspect you of being in cahoots with the depositor, so you may find yourself talking to the local police, accused of fraud. You've put yourself in a bad spot by giving your password out. Unless your can present other evidence, the bank will have a strong assumption that any activity conducted via the login is performed by you. This is why you should get in touch with your bank right away, to build up some evidence of good will on your part.

More remote possibilities are that it is part of a 'long con', where somebody is trying to find out how credulous/greedy you are. This seems unlikely. Unless you are a plum target, few con artists would want to risk as much as $2500. Theoretically it could be some sort of money laundering set up, but amounts involved seem too small for that to be likely.

Answer 4

This is more or less a newer version of a very old scam, such as the following link: https://www.snopes.com/fraud/sales/cashier.asp

Someone supposedly sends you money. They either give you a check, personal check, or surprisingly enough in your situation claim to want to put it directly into your account themselves.

They only need some of this money, though, apparently - and offer to let you keep the difference after they ship a small portion of it somewhere else.

The scam is that the method they use to deposit the money into your account, usually a cashiers check, can take literal months to turn out to be a fake. Much, much longer than the banks are legally allowed to hold the funds.

So it appears as if you've made off with quite a bit of money; Long after the transactions have settled, the bank realizes it's a fake deposit, and you're left with the difference: It's as if you never had the money, but suddenly decided to send the scammer some cash.

The amount they gave you is reversed, but the amount you sent them is not. So you're left out the cash they claimed they were taking out of 'their' money. Their money never existed in your account; it just took too long for the bank to verify whether it was real or not so they made an assumption.

Scams like this can be quite complex - here's an example of one that may seem fairly legitimate to some until they've already signed up and received a check: Received an unexpected cashiers check for over $2K from another state - is this some scam?

Answer 5

The scam doesn't even make sense. Besides the horrible grammar...

he gives us what is left over do to customer appreciation and loyalty conducting good business. We are given 100 checks (used for given to follow customers at our branch) What we are going to do are give you payrolls that are worth $8,000 to $20,000 dollars of your choice.

1. Maybe I've been around "business" so long (my grandfather owned/ran a small business, and I went to work at age 14) that I just can't fathom people believing that businesses would do this.
2. Accountants would notice.
3. Payrolls?
4. Who wouldn't choose $20,000.