John Rumm wrote:

nightjar wrote:

You wouldn't normally have sent a cheque to these people, so they wouldn't
have that information. The only other thing needed, besides your bank
details, is a copy of your signature. The early Nigerian scams used to ask
you to send a blank, signed, sheet of paper, but that did tend to make
people suspicious. However, most people will obligingly sign the letter in
which they send the details, so it only needs a modest skill in forgery to
create a letter of authority to transfer funds out of your account.

alot of these seem to be so called "advance fee" scams. Where you end up
being asked to pay some fee for bank clearance / customs / bribes
whatever to get at "your" money. Neeless to say its this advance fee
that vanishes....

There was a nice case recently where a chap at a computer dealer
actually managed to turn the tables, and scam the scammers out of some
money by the same trick:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/51/31270.html


ROFLMAO. I like it :-)