I have been corresponding with a scammer who goes by the name of Mary Dean for several months now. Our relationship started because she said she wanted to buy my chronically unplayed cello; I have lugged this instrument during two apartment moves over the past few months, and finally put it up for sale on Craigslist.

After her first message, there was a delay, but I remained hopeful. Eventually, Mary Dean wrote and said that her mother had died and she had to tend to the family’s affairs, and I told her to take as long as she needed. When Mary Dean messaged me to say she was sending a cashier’s check for twice as much as I’d asked for so that I could “pay the movers,” my heart sank. I began to suspect that the check would be fraudulent, and I would be left owing whatever I gave to the movers to the bank. I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to get rid of my unwieldy cello anytime soon. 

“I think cashier’s checks are being used in a growing number of schemes,” says Tejasvi Srimushnam, staff attorney for the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. These scams are common on Craigslist and other online marketplaces, and the number of fake check complaints to the FTC and the Internet Fraud Complaint Center doubled between 2014 and 2017 from 12,781 to 29,513, according to a report by the Better Business Bureau.

When I set out to find out why, I suspected that some sort of technological change had happened over the past 10 years that made cashier’s checks easier for scammers to manufacture. Maybe the printers became cheaper? Ink became easier to replicate? Instead, I found that a few federal laws are responsible for failing to contain the potentially disastrous mess of our shared online world. 

In August 1987, Congress voted the Expedited Funds Availability Act into effect. This regulation requires that banks give customers their money from cashed checks after a certain amount of time; for most cashier’s checks these days, this means funds must be available within 24 hours. In effect, this act is a compromise between security and convenience, and gives banks less than a day to verify a check. Banks are also obligated to put most checks through a weeks-long clearing process. Together, these rules put banks in a double bind — they have to get customers the money before they’ve verified the checks. 

Cashier’s checks have a particularly fast turnaround because they’re supposed to be safe. They are guaranteed by a bank; they are the debit cards of the check world. When someone orders a legitimate cashier’s check from a bank, they must either pay the full value in cash or have that amount available to be immediately withdrawn from their bank account. Because it’s been paid for upfront, it’s impossible for a cashier’s check to bounce. It’s a great currency for people who know each other but don’t trust each other that much, like landlords and tenants. 

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Cashier’s checks are not great for people who don’t know each other at all, like two strangers on Craigslist. That’s because there’s always a possibility that they are fake. Usually the scammer gives the victim a check for more than they asked for, and then asks them to pay the extra money to an apparent third party. They have a plausible story for this part: Mary Dean asked me to give the excess funds to the cello movers. There are several other versions of this scam. Maybe a letter comes telling someone they’ve won a lottery but need to pay taxes in order to get their money. Perhaps someone hires a victim as a “secret shopper,” then asks them to use their own funds to confirm the reliability of money transfer services. 

“Michael,” a single father from Canada who asked me not to use his real name, fell for an iteration of this fraud. Michael rents out a room in his house to make extra income, and lives in an area with a lot of universities. He’s used to catering to students, many of whom often come from abroad. He wasn’t suspicious when he got an email from someone claiming to need a room while she attended school, but he did grow nervous when she sent him a cashier’s check for $3,400, since the rent was only $700. He decided to let the bank decide. 

Michael warned the teller that he thought the check might be fake, and even asked for them to put the money on hold while they verified it, but the bank staff reassured him and immediately gave him the required cash. The supposed student had asked Michael to deposit the cash in another bank account that Michael did not own. Soon after, the original bank said that the check was fake and asked for the money back, putting Michael out more than $2,000. “How are the banks not ready for this?” he says. “I literally went into my bank and said ‘This is fake, I want a hold on it.’ And they weren’t interested in doing that.”

The people who design these scams are professionals, and they are experts at coming up with stories that catch people off guard or garner their sympathies. For example, Mary Dean created a narrative about how her mother was sick and then that she died. I believed her, so I made every effort to be understanding of her increasingly odd behavior. The Canadian renter expected to work with students from other countries and so wasn’t fazed by slightly unusual behavior. “This is what [the scammers] do day in and day out,” says Srimushnam. “Of course they’re going to be good at what they do.”

The key moment happens when the person cashes the fake check. The bank should catch it, right? That is, after all, its purpose. US financial institutions are on track to spend more than $68 billion on cybersecurity between 2016 and 2020, according to a metastudy by the Department of Homeland Security. 

Banks use a combination of methods in order to secure checks. Matt Kriegsfeld is in charge of digital banking products at Mitek Systems, the company that creates the technology that banking apps use for mobile check deposits. He explains that most big-bank checks are printed by two companies, Harland Clarke and Deluxe. These businesses communicate frequently with their banks and technology companies like Mitek. Kriegsfeld says that Mitek has more than 40 patents in image processing technology. “We are going down to the pixel level,” he says. He says that tricks like the checkbox that says “For mobile deposit only” are particularly helpful. Banking apps take less than three seconds to visually analyze the checks. They give all the information they find over to banks, which then put the checks through another round of security. 

If the cashier’s check was written by a bank, it has to go through a clearinghouse, which is usually operated by the Federal Reserve Board. Even though this system has been largely automated since 2004, it can still take more than two weeks, according to the Better Business Bureau. That means there’s often a gap between when the money goes to the bank customer and the moment it can actually be verified. Cashier’s check scammers take advantage of this uncertainty by asking their victims to somehow return them some money. When the bank finally finds out the check is fake and takes the money from the customer’s account, the con artist will have disappeared, and the victim will be in the red. 

To the banks’ credit, their security systems do actually catch the majority of fake checks. This is where the internet comes in: There are just so many of them. There were about $8 billion worth of check fraud attempts in 2016, which cost the bank about $790 million. That’s only about 9 percent. But the web is great at linking potential scammers to lots of other people, and so it’s 9 percent of a huge number. There’s “a lot more opportunities for people to network, a lot more people to connect,” says Srimushnam.

The group most likely to be victims are people in their 20s, followed by small businesses, lawyers, and the banks themselves, according to a report by the Better Business Bureau. Ron Eisenberg, a lawyer from Missouri, likes to keep evidence of attempted fraud and frame it for his own entertainment. He says he has noticed that lawyers have been targeted for the past few years. “I don’t think it’s going to stop,” he says. “It’s so prolific and so common.”

Congress has tried to make check cashing more up-to-date. On October 28, 2003, they signed the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act into law. It was supposed to help banks handle electronic checks more efficiently and allowed the kind of check deposit technology that Mitek Systems provides. However, it hasn’t eliminated the gap between when a bank customer gets the funds from a cashier’s check and when the bank verifies the check is real. 

It’s humiliating to fall for a scam. I caught the fraud before it came to fruition, and I still felt embarrassed. I was also a little nervous. Mary Dean sent me the check and when I wrote saying I was sending it back, she blew up and sent several all-caps emails about how she was going to call the FBI. I wasn’t concerned about these particular threats, but there are a lot of ways an internet stranger who knows your name and email can bother you. The Dr. Frankenstein behind Mary Dean could dox me or just send me endless junk mail. 

Srimushnam says he sympathizes with people who have been defrauded and urges them to report their experiences to the FTC. “If a consumer is concerned about a particular actor, complain either to the FTC or USPS,” he says. “These reports are invaluable to us. It’s a big marketplace and we are trying to be a legitimate cop on the beat.”

In the future, I will practice better Craigslist hygiene and only email from the semi-anonymous address they provide. I will remember to delete my email signature to avoid giving out my full name. And if anyone reading wants to buy a cello, it’s still available. 

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Welcome to Noticed, The Goods’ design trend column. You know that thing you’ve been seeing all over the place? Allow us to explain it.

What it is: A hardy plant, called Pilea peperomioides, that once grew on rocks in the shade in the southwestern Yunnan province of China. It grows about a foot tall and forms orbs of brightly verdant round leaves. Now it’s rare in its native habitat but everywhere in homes.

Where it is: About two years ago, plant enthusiasts could only get Pilea peperiomiodes cuttings from their friends or personal growers on Instagram or Etsy. Gradually, trendy plant delivery services began to acquire them from regional nurseries. Now, big-box retailers like Home Depot, Walmart, and Amazon sell these plants, as well as direct-to-consumer plant outlets like the Sill. They appear in Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters planter ads, and Ikea sells a fake version. They’re featured on the accounts of #plantfluencers like Hilton Carter, Erin Harding, and Morgan Doane.

Why you’re seeing it everywhere: The scarcity-driven social media hype has continued even as the Pilea peperomioides has reached mainstream availability, in part because they’re tough but distinctive houseplants. The plants grow and reproduce quickly, sprouting small pups in the surrounding soil. They’ve evolved to prefer a dry and shady habitat, which fits the description of most modern homes. They aren’t toxic to children or animals and are easy to recognize in a houseplant lineup.

Designer Aisha Richardson first saw Pilea peperomioides on her Instagram feed about two years ago. From the beginning, she felt a strong attachment to the plant because of its coin-shaped leaves and vivid green color. “It’s so cute,” she says. “When you see a plant you like, you research it, you read about it, you want it.” But she did not immediately get it because, at that time, these plants were not widely available in the United States.

So Richardson drew on her ties within the Instagram community. She found an account that was selling 4-inch cuttings for $45 each. There was no promise that the plants, which were only about four or five leaves each, would sprout roots, but Richardson decided to take the risk. “I DMed [the seller] and I was number 10 on her waiting list,” she says. Eventually, she got the chance to pay a not-insignificant amount of money for the houseplant.

It’s dead now.

Richardson’s plant’s fate is not unique. Alexandre Monro, who is a taxonomist, systematist, and field botanist at Kew Gardens, also killed his personal Pilea peperomioides, which he received as a cutting from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. Monro studies the genus, Pilea, the largest in the nettle family with more than 700 species. But his expertise didn’t save his houseplant.

He says he may have overwatered it. The plant grows naturally on limestone boulders in the shade of forests in southwest China, so it’s accustomed to dry, relatively low-light habitats and thrives in people’s houses. It’s rare in the wild because of deforestation and land management changes during China’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, according to Monro. The species traveled from China to Norway in 1946 by way of a Norwegian missionary who lived for several years in China. He shared the plant with friends all over Norway, where it then spread throughout the world, according to Phillip Cribb, an honorary research fellow at Kew Gardens who has studied the history of Pilea peperomioides.

Monro first saw the species in El Salvador. That specimen he saw had yellow spots, which he says were quite cute — but they were likely caused by a virus, since every Pilea houseplant in the world is the asexually reproduced offspring of, most likely, a single plant, or a few plants at most. Monro says he has never seen any female flowers in cultivation, though Cribb reports that he has.

Though her first Pilea died, Richardson now owns three of these clones. The way she acquired these plants closely follows the way they spread across the US marketplace over the past five years. Richardson subscribes to the NYC-based plant subscription company Horti. She added a Pilea to her normal monthly delivery, and it cost $25. She also found that the Sill, one of her favorite plant stores, was offering a free Pilea with the purchase of $60 worth of plants. “I like the idea of how they grow like weeds. It’s called the friendship plant because you can just break the pups off,” she says. “Plants just make people happy.” Richardson laughed, because she realized she had just quoted the Sill’s tagline.

The Sill is one of the standouts of the modern era of plant e-commerce. It launched in 2012 in New York City, and still has two physical locations there and a recently opened store in LA. It caters to mainly urban millennials and has recently raised $7.5 million in funding.

Erin Marino, the director of marketing, has worked there since the first year and has watched many species of plants, such as Monstera deliciosa and Ficus lyrata (a.k.a. the fiddle-leaf fig) rise in popularity. She traces these trends to social media, noting that after Pinterest became popular around 2010, sharing aspirational photos became easy. And plants are often an inexpensive way to imitate the pictures on Instagram and Pinterest, compared to investing in a new house, art, or appliances. “In all honesty, they’re a pretty cheap piece of furniture,” says Marino.  

The Sill has slightly higher prices than big-box retail stores, though they’re comparable to those of other online shops. At the time of writing, they sell 3-inch Pilea peperomioides for $13. Home Depot recently started providing 6-inch pots for about $23, Walmart has 4-inch plants for $6.50, and at Amazon, 2-inch pots are available for $13.95. Home Depot sources plants from United Nursery, a Florida-based houseplant wholesale company.

It took a while for these mainstream large growing nurseries to warm up to the new species. “They’re scared to put their resources to growing something new,” says Marino, though she has recently noticed a shift. “Growers have started to commercialize and grow it.” The Sill announced it was interested in stocking Pilea peperomioides, and about a year and a half ago, one of its regional New Jersey nurseries was able to deliver.

Plants come in and out of fashion, much like jeans or dog breeds. But Marino thinks Pilea is here to stay in American markets, especially if the price continues to go down because of more widespread availability. “Aesthetically, they’re adorable. And they’re 100 percent nontoxic,” she says. Many houseplants, such as the peace lily, philodendron, and alocasia, can harm curious pets and children if eaten. “As people are bringing the outdoors in, they are being a little more careful about bringing it into their space.”

But Richardson says her Pilea plants have not delivered on the amount of time, energy, and money she has put into them. Still, she learned some lessons. “After my Pilea debacle, I’ve realized I can’t have the type of plants that I like,” she says. “I’m trying to stick to a lot of low-light plants.” She predicts the next It Plant will be string of pearls, Senecio rowleyanus, a low-maintenance succulent that hangs over its pot like jewelry. Marino says she is noticing the growing popularity of plants from the genus Calathea. They have large, colorful leaves, do well in shady rooms, and move throughout the day according to sun and water patterns.

There’s been a growing buzz around the Zamioculcas zamiifolia “Raven,” an all-black variety of the nearly indestructible ZZ plant, which won the 2018 award for Best New Plant at the Tropical Plant Industry Exhibition. At the time of writing, rooted 4-inch cuttings are on sale on Etsy for a whopping $75. As with the Pilea, the price will probably go down in a few months. As Richardson says: “Some plants just take time.”

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