The lottery scam letters that have been arriving in mailboxes all across the U.S. should come to a stop, or at least slow down a bit very soon.

Canadian police have arrested two people in Pickering, Ontario, which is located near Toronto. According to police, the two individuals were involved in a scam that involved sending thousands of phony checks to people in the United States informing them that they had won $75,000 in a publisher’s sweepstakes.

Included with the checks was a notice that the recipient would have to pay taxes in order to receive their winnings and the enclosed phony check was provided to help pay the required taxes.

The phony checks were apparently quite authentic-looking. So much so, that many banks would cash them only to find that they were not genuine and would then require the person who cashed it to return the money.

The scam artists were successful only if the intended victim cashed the check and sent the money to “help cover the cost of the taxes.” The victim was then left holding the bag and was responsible for repaying the amount of the phony check to the bank that cashed it.

This is one thing that amazes me about banks these days. How is it that a bank can be so easily fooled? In this day of electronic everything, wouldn’t you think there would be some system in place where a bank teller could look at a check and perhaps enter some information into a computer and instantly determine if the check was genuine?

I can only presume that since the banks know it is the customer that is responsible for covering the cost of a phony check, there is not much incentive to be sure a check is genuine.

If the banks themselves were responsible for covering the costs of phony checks, you can be sure that an elaborate system of verifying the authenticity of checks would have been in place a long time ago.

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