Show them the money, and they try to cash a fraudulent check

An anonymous donor's recent gift to Los Angeles County has ended up proving the adage "No good deed goes unpunished."

The person sent a $10,000 check to the county last month for no reason other than wanting to help out the government during its economic crisis.

"In this time of economic difficulties, government needs all the help they can get," read the handwritten note accompanying the gift.

"Please put this anonymous check to good use," it added. "God bless you."

But a county gaffe exposed some financial information about the check on the Internet and apparently led to at least one failed attempt to fraudulently access bank funds.

When county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's office blogged about the rare and generous gift, it posted a photo of the actual cashier's check - including the routing number.

The website story, headlined "The patron saint of ... government?" went viral.

Within days, someone in Washington, D.C., apparently tried to run a counterfeit check scam using the same information from the donor's check.

"Unfortunately, we got one complaint from the East Coast about someone having tried to present them with a fake version of this check," said David Sommers, the county's public information officer.

He said the county immediately

took steps to block the scam, including contacting federal investigators and asking Internet search engines to remove all photos of the check online.

Image of check still online

"The county tried to make sure that there were no instances of anyone trying to do a scam that took advantage of the good nature of this person," Sommers said. "Basically, we didn't want to overreact to something even after we found out that it appeared to be a single isolated instance."

Not all websites, however, have removed the check image. A quick Google search Wednesday revealed at least two websites that continue to post images of the check.

Yaroslavsky's spokesman, Joel Bellman, said the supervisor's office never anticipated its blog entry would be misused.

"Obviously, it hadn't occurred to anybody that this would be a problem," he said. "It was one of those unanticipated problems where, you know, a larcenous-minded opportunist jumped in and tried to take advantage of an innocent situation but apparently was thwarted."

Funds are being protected

There appears to have been no other attempts to commit fraud using the check - at least so far.

Both Sommers and Bellman emphasized that while there may be copies of the check still available in cyberspace, bank authorities have taken precautions to protect the funds.

The cashier's check was purchased at Banner Bank in Bellingham, Wash., on May 2. It was mailed to the county Auditor-Controller's Office and the bank declined to identify the donor to county officials.

Auditor-Controller Wendy Watanabe said while the county receives financial donations, they are usually designated for specific county programs, not for the general fund.

"We were elated that there would be such a good person out there," Watanabe said on Yaroslavsky's website. "Most of the time we get attacked for overspending. For someone to actually donate to the government, it's just unheard of."

"Why this person picked L.A. County, we have not a clue," she added. "Maybe they've sent $10,000 to every government agency out there."

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18380316?source=rss

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