Why incoming funds can be a red flag, not a windfall.
Every consumer scam warning in the country is written for money going out. The dangerous case is the one nobody warns you about.
The gap in the standard advice
Almost all scam education answers one question: how do I avoid sending my money to a criminal? It is good advice and it is incomplete, because a large and growing share of scam activity depends on money going the other way — into ordinary accounts, briefly, on its way somewhere else.
People who would never send $9,000 to a stranger will happily receive $9,000 from one, because receiving feels passive. It is not passive. The moment funds land in your account, you are the person the record points at.
Four kinds of money you did not expect
Not every surprise deposit is a scam. Sorting them takes about a minute.
- A genuine mistake: someone fat-fingered an account number. Real, and rare. The fix is to tell your bank and let them reverse it — never to send it back yourself.
- A refund you are owed: it arrives on the card that paid, with a merchant name you recognise, and nobody rings you about it.
- An overpayment you are asked to return: this is the remote-access refund scam, almost every time.
- Money from a stranger with instructions to move it on: this is muling, whatever the accompanying story is.
Why you must never send it back yourself
If money truly arrived by mistake, your bank can reverse it through the same system that delivered it. That process is documented, and it protects you.
If you send it back manually, two things can go wrong. You may be returning it to a different account than it came from — which is precisely the trick. Or the original transfer may itself be reversed later, leaving you out the amount twice. Both outcomes are common and both are avoidable by doing nothing except telling the bank.
The rule that covers all of it
Money that arrives unexpectedly stays where it is until the bank tells you where it came from. Not the sender. The bank.