Common financial scam?

Question

A foreign business asks you to receive checks from home...

Answer 1

...you do, and six months later, you've got FBI on your doorstep. The "foreign business", apparently, received advanced payments for goods it never shipped or services it never provided. The U.S. Attorney is putting together the paperwork to indict you for mail fraud or accessory to mail fraud, because from where he/she sits, the foreign business that supposedly perpetrated the fraud could be but a figment of your imagination...

Answer 2

Yep big scam and it seems to be getting more and more common.

You receive the checks. You put the checks in your account. You are then asked to wire most of the money to another account somewhere after the checks have cleared. What is happening is that the bank is required to make the cash available to you after a certain number of days, even if the check has not officially cleared the other bank yet. You get the cash, keep like 10% and send the rest to someone. The checks now come back as bad. Perhaps they were stolen or counterfeit, but they are bad. The bank now wants you to give the money back. The money you sent on to another account (which is now cleared out and the scammers are long gone). You will be the person left holding the bag.

There are some other bad things that can happen as well. The scammers may now have your bank account information. They could try to clean it out. They may try to use your account for scamming purposes. Also, they probably approached you as if this was a legal job of some sort. They probably had you fill out an application or perhaps they performed a credit check on you. Now, they have your information so they can steal your ID.

Another nasty scam that is kind of similiar to this is accepting packages and then sending them on with prepaid labels. The company tells you that they need you to process packages and send them out of the country. What is going on is that these guys are using stolen account information or credit card info to buy stuff. The stuff comes to you and you send it out of the country (maybe to somewhere in the country as well, depends on the scammers). Eventually, the police will come knocking at your door wanting to know where all of this merchandise is. You of course, sent it to someone who cannot be tracked.

Answer 3

Yes common scam.
Anyone asking for any unsolicited financial information or help... bells should go off.

Answer 4

Sounds like a scam, but since you have provided almost no details it is very hard to tell.