Bank draft fraud

Photo: Contributed - Lisa Maloney

A photo of the fraudulent bank draft sent to theCanadian Jewelry Exchange in Kelowna last week.

A fraudulent bank draft that recently showed up in Kelowna has led one business to warn others to be on the lookout.

Lisa Maloney of the Canadian Jewelry Exchange says they received a call from a man in Ontario last week, who was interested in a piece of jewelry found on their website.

This person settled on a ring valued at over $40,000 and agreed to send a bank draft the next day, says Maloney.

Sure enough, the company received a draft for $41,475 and took it to the bank.

But something must have struck a chord, because their bank held the draft until the next day, before alerting them that the bank draft was indeed fraudulent.

According to Maloney this is quite rare. The bank told her they hadn’t seen a fraudulent bank draft in 10 years – instead it’s typically credit cards that are faked.

“People assume that bank drafts are always legitimate. Most businesses don’t know that you can check on them,” she says.

“But because we’re in a business where we do get a lot of fraudulent requests, we check every bank draft.”

Maloney contacted the Kelowna RCMP, but since there was no victim, the investigation was not completed.

Cst. Kris Clark says they were made aware of the fraudulent bank draft but since the ring was never sent away, no fraud actually took place.

He says that decision was made by the investigator in charge of the file.