Let me tell you a story. A young couple living in a rented mobile home on our property listed their FW for sale and received a cashier's check(sight unseen) for the unit plus a more than generous "shipping fee". They were, of course, thrilled and hurried down to the bank to deposit the check and awaited the "shipping company" to come pick up the unit. Now, these young people did not have a checking account, so they prevailed on her parents to let them deposit the check in their account. In 2 days, the prospective buyer called and regretfully said he couldn't go through with the sale, his wife and son had been in a terrible auto accident and he needed all the money he could scrape up, so could they please wire him the money back? These naive young people swallowed the story hook, line and sinker. After all, it was a cashier's check, what could go wrong? They had her parents wire the money back to the "purchaser". Two days later the cashier's check was returned as fraudulent, the purchaser had disappeared, as well as the $8,500 from the parent's account. If you deposit the check and it is fraudulent, your bank will probably charge you a fee (I think it's $35 or $40 nowadays).
