Remember, US Postal Money Orders have, for several years,had a bold legend stating that they cannot be cashed outside the United States. Some clever Nigerian counterfeiting gang decided that it would
fruitful to have naive Americans deposit the bogus instruments, believing them genuine, and send a portion of the supposedly good funds abroad to the fraudsters. By trhe time the victims discovered that the money orders were counterfeit, their banks had long since paid out the victims' own money to the criminals, and later debited the accounts accordingly.

This is merely a variation on the financial scam currently circulating worldwide, whereby worth less cheques are sent to a victim, who "keeps" 5-10% as commission, and remits the balance to the fraudster. The bogus cheques often do not get returned, refused and marked " refer to maker" for some time, as the cheques appear to be genuine, but the signatures never match those on file.

The Nigerian postal money order fraudsters have generally selected American females as their targets.

Compliance officers at American financial institutions should alert bank staff to reduce the risk that clients will
fall victim to this scam. Customers depositing large numbers of US postal money orders should be immediately interviewed to ascertain whether they may be unknowing participants in this scam.