When Nature Gallery owner Carol Garsten heard from a customer who wanted to buy a fossil for nearly $15,000 from her downtown Los Altos shop, she was “thrilled,” she said.
The events that followed, however, left Garsten frustrated – and out $2,300. Her customer disappeared and her fossil was recovered at the last second with help from the Los Altos branch of UPS.
The customer requested to pay by ACH (electronic check), which automates the process of transferring funds from one bank account to another. Garsten had never received that type of payment but checked her Intuit QuickBooks account and found that she could accept it.
She proceeded with the sale and the funds appeared in her bank account one day later, Jan. 13. It didn’t raise any red flags for her at the time.
With the funds cleared, Garsten reached out to her customer, who had requested overnight shipping so he could show the object the following weekend. She paid more than $2,000 to load the fossil into a crate and ship it to Georgia overnight. When she was finished, she invoiced the customer. Intuit emailed her to tell her the shipping payment was on its way.
The next day, she got an email from Intuit: The initial check of $14,875 had been returned. She rushed to call the customer, but his number had been disconnected.
“I thought I would never hear from this guy ever…
