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So I sold a piece of audio equipment to a man overseas who wanted to pay by cheque. I told him that was fine but I would not be shipping it until it had cleared, and he agreed.

A printed cheque finally arrived with a local branch of "Lockerbie" printed on it.

Immediately the man asked me to send the extra part of the cheque funds to a woman who was making collections for him to deliver it. At first I was a little confused but went a long with it, however luckily I never sent the funds as he suddenly went quiet.

Well over a month later now and my local bank has contacted me to say they need to retrieve the cash as it was a fraudulent cheque. I'm personally stuck because I needed those funds to pay off bills and deposits elsewhere (hence why I was having to sell the equipment).

Now the bank initially explained that the funds may take up to 28 days to clear and appear in my account, and as it appeared in my available balance just a little over 26 hours later I phoned the bank to check that the funds were definitely in my account and he could not back track if I sent the parcel out to him.

Where do I stand with this? I have a meeting on Saturday this weekend to go in and talk about it with them at my home branch. Personally I feel like this is their responsibility seen as they had to manually process the cheque themselves and contact the other parties bank account before depositing the funds into my account. Not only that but nearly a month later and they're only just getting in touch?

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    You can pretty much count the money, and the equipment as gone. This is a classic "craiglist-nigerian prince" scam. Sorry you were a victim, but you will need to make other arrangements to pay your existing bills and cover the money sent to the third party.
    – Pete B.
    Commented May 11, 2017 at 13:15
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    Immediately the man asked me to send the extra part of the cheque funds to a woman that's a Big Red Flag.
    – RonJohn
    Commented May 11, 2017 at 15:43
  • Nothing in your question explicitly indicates when you shipped the audio equipment.
    – RonJohn
    Commented May 11, 2017 at 15:44
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    Anyone who sends you extra money and asks you to send it somewhere else is scamming you. Full stop. It's good you didn't send the extra money off, but that doesn't make the fraudulent money yours.
    – ceejayoz
    Commented May 11, 2017 at 19:58
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    So the follow up to this was the bank locked all of my accounts (including the ones they didn't pay the cheque into). I went into my local branch, did an interview and they understood what had happened. They promised to unlock my accounts and did after two working days.. however a week later my debit card became unusable again and after a week of battling with the bank they finally admitted fault, they initially claimed they couldn't see any blocks until a senior fraud manager stepped in. In compensation the bank paid out £480 to cover loss of earnings, car fuel costs and the stress incurred.
    – James Lawson
    Commented Mar 31, 2019 at 23:23

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Where do I stand with this?

The money was not your's. So co-operate with the bank to get this sent back ASAP.

It is good that the equipment is still with you.

Yes Bank would need evidence that you were a victim and not party to this crime. Co-operate with the relevant authorities and get this resolved.

It is a lesson learnt where luckily no money was lost, but quite a bit of hassle and personal time lost.

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