Overpayment scam
confidence trick designed to prey upon victims’ good faith
An overpayment scam, also known as a refund scam, is a type of confidence trick designed to prey upon victims' good faith. In the most basic form, an overpayment scam consists of a scammer claiming, falsely, to have sent a victim an excess amount of money. The scammer then attempts to convince the victim to return the difference between the sent amount and the intended amount. This scam can take a number of forms, including check overpayment scams and online refund scams.
Variants
The scam has many variants, but all of them include some combination of a fraudulent payment from the scammer to the victim and a legitimate payment from the victim to the scammer.
Check overpayment scam
In a check overpayment scam, the scammer will pay the victim for goods or services (often in response to an online or classified advertisement, though there are a number of other premises for check overpayment scams) with a fraudulent check of an amount in excess of the intended amount. In some cases, the scammer will claim that the difference between the intended amount and the amount on the check is due to customs or other import fees, or shipping fees. The fake check can present either as a personal or cashier's check. The scammer then requests that the victim pay them the excess between the intended amount and the amount on the check. After the victim does so, they discover that the scammer's check was fraudulent, losing their money.
“Overpayment scam” enters the record as confidence trick designed to prey upon victims’ good faith. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Overpayment, scam and confidence can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q104835881. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Overpayment scam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.