Always make sure your bank 'clears' the check before you start spending the money. I even waited for my own paycheck to clear when I deposited it.

My sister got a check in the mail for no damned reason. She took it to her bank. They told her it was a scam.
Have you ever in your life gotten free money? Nobody gives away money.
Someone hit the lottery for a billion dollars! How much did the lottery operator take in and keep? And how much did they give the 'Government' of the state where they operated, as a 'bribe' to 'legalize' the lottery? Your local school system got $100,000 dollars from the lottery. Sounds like a lot. But how much did they keep, profits from 'legally' preying on our desperation and desire to win big money?

My 95 year old mother wins a million dollars and a new Mercedes a couple times a week. All she has to do is have $300 at the door on Tuesday when they show up with her money and the car on a flatbed truck.
"I don't have $300," she tells them.
"How much DO you have?" they ask.
And they want her to renew her car warranty ten times a week. She doesn't have a car.
They warn her someone charged $299 on her credit card. She doesn't have a credit card.
They then say, "Oh. It was a check."
"Well, which is it?" she asks. "My nonexistent credit card or a check?"

This young lady on the TV news has to accept her shame at her naivete', but her bank should have been more of a firewall. They should have been consulted, her fault, about whether the check had cleared. Had the full amount truly been transferred into her account? If 'Yes', then return the excess, perhaps minus the remainder of the bill, the other $300, to expedite things and make sure that guy's incompetent bank didn't screw it up again. Five days later, the check bounced. Five days was likely not a hardship for the sender or the receiver to wait, had this been a legitimate situation.

The manager of a take-home restaurant told of a guy coming in, ordering a meal for one, paying with a ten dollar bill. In the middle of her giving him his change he asked for some different way of paying so he could get some specific change for another purpose of his own. In the confusion she ended up giving him more than he had given her. She said the swinging door back into the kitchen literally hit her in the backside as she realized what had just happened. Out in the parking lot there was no one to be seen.

If you pull off a scam like that once or twice a day, or the songwriting scam once a week, once a month, you supplement your income substantially. Money motive. Prisons are full of pretty smart people who thought they could get away with it, and even smart ones and pretty dumb ones who committed their crimes under the influence of alcohol and other drugs. It's a social situation to avoid.

And of course, to be aware that all those people in prison used to be out here, smiling across the counter, 'smiling' on the internet, seeming like nice people, when they're actually Predators, practicing Predatory Capitalism. It's worked for them in the past, so they're doing it again. En garde, people!

Last edited by Gary E. Andrews; 01/25/21 01:21 PM.
There will always be another song to be written. Someone will write it. Why not you? www.garyeandrews.com