Law firm is contacted by a broker who tells the supervising real estate attorney that an individual in Shanghai  is putting a deposit down on an expensive house in town (which was advertised in the local papers).  Man in Shanghai emails law firm & states that they will be receiving a deposit check of 150K drawn on the Bank of China from a Canadian law firm (hmm...).  Check arrives from Canada with a letter from a "lawyer" in the firm on what looks like letterhead stationary.  Subsequent emails & phone conversations with the Canadian firm show that 1) the firm does exist; 2) that the "attorney" at the firm does not exist; 3) that this is not the first time that this particular law firm has answered questions on this subject &; 4) the check, obviously, is no good. My question is how does the scam work?  Is this a variation on the deposit the check & then the Shanghai buyer changes his mind & wants the money wired to his bank for a refund or is there some other con going on here?  The only other thing I could think of would be that when the check was returned to the Bank of China that it would contain bank account information for the American bank (possibly hacking into the account???).   Just curious to see if anyone else has ever heard of this.  Now, also note that this particular law firm does do a fair amount of real estate conveyancing for wealthy overseas buyers & had, in fact, recently completed a valid transaction for a couple living in Singapore who had wired funds, etc etc.