Published on 2026-07-25
A buyer 'overpaid' you and wants the difference back. Now what?
The payment looks real, the story sounds innocent, and the ask feels small: send back the extra. That's the exact moment this scam is designed to work.
You've sold something online. A buyer sends a check, or a payment confirmation, for more than you agreed on. Before you can even ask why, an explanation arrives: they typed the wrong amount, or a shipping company needs the extra covered, or their assistant made the mistake, not them. Could you just send back the difference once it clears? It's such a small, reasonable-sounding request that most people say yes before thinking it through.
It's reasonable-sounding on purpose. The Federal Trade Commission, which fields exactly this question from sellers regularly, is blunt about it: this is a common scam. The buyer never actually sent you real money. What they sent was a counterfeit check or a bad money order, dressed up convincingly enough to fool an online seller, and often good enough to fool a bank teller too, at least for a while.
A screenshot is not a settled payment
Here's the part that catches people out: seeing money appear doesn't mean the money is real. By law, banks have to make deposited funds available within a day or two, but it can take weeks for the bank to discover the check itself was fake, according to the FTC, and by then the money you sent back is already gone. So the balance in your account can rise while the check behind it is worthless, and nothing on your screen will tell you the difference. A payment confirmation email looks the same whether it's real or forged, right up until it isn't.
The FDIC, which has tracked this exact scam in its own consumer alerts, describes the same trap: your bank may show a check as deposited, but that doesn't mean you're actually in the clear. It can take several weeks for a bank to discover that a check is fake, weeks during which the funds sitting in your account look completely legitimate.
Notice how much work the excuse is doing in all of this. 'My assistant made an error', 'the courier needs extra for insurance', 'I typed one too many zeros': none of it needs to be true for the scam to work, it only needs to sound plausible enough that refunding the difference feels like basic decency rather than a risk. That's the whole design. A request built around guilt and good manners gets less scrutiny than one built around obvious greed, which is exactly why this version of the scam has stayed effective for so long.
Who's left holding the loss
This is where the scam actually bites. You wire back the 'extra' amount, because the buyer asked nicely and the money appeared to be there. Weeks later, the original check bounces. The bank reverses the deposit, and you're liable for the full amount, whether or not you've already spent or forwarded part of it. You've lost the wired refund, and now you owe the bank for a payment that was never real in the first place. The buyer, meanwhile, is gone.
By the time you learn the payment was fake, the only real money in the story is the money you already sent away.
The one rule that actually protects you
The fix here isn't complicated, even if it feels a little rude in the moment: never send money back because a payment appears to have arrived. Wait until your bank confirms, in writing, that the funds have actually settled and cleared, not just that a balance is showing. A buyer with a genuine mistake will be perfectly willing to wait for that confirmation. A buyer running this scam will suddenly develop a new urgent excuse for why waiting isn't an option, which tells you everything you need to know before a single dollar moves.
And if someone insists on paying more than the asking price at all, the simplest response is often the safest one: decline, and offer to refund a genuine overpayment only after your own bank has confirmed the original funds are real and final. A legitimate buyer loses nothing by that condition. Only one kind of buyer ever pushes back against it.
It's worth saying plainly: none of this makes you careless for almost falling for it. The whole scheme is built to look exactly like an honest mistake, made by someone in a small hurry, asking for a small favor. Slowing down for a few extra days before any money leaves your hands isn't suspicion for its own sake. It's just giving the only person who can actually tell a real payment from a fake one, your own bank, enough time to do that job before you do anything that can't be undone.
Sources
- Fake Check Scams (Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Advice) (consumer.ftc.gov)
- Beware of Fake Checks (FDIC Consumer News) (fdic.gov)