Good afternoon XXXXXXXXXX and welcome back to Just Answer!

I am going to assume that this check came from outside of the USA (Canada, UK, etc....) and is stating that you must pay some type of insurance fee or something along those lines to insure your money. This scam is quite good and has caught a lot of people. While it looks very legitimate and the banks mentioned on the checks and such are actual banks, this is a scam. Do not cash this check or you will have to pay it back to your bank and most likely with penalties as well. I have received a check from Global Alliance as well. This company changes its name, address, etc... quite often to slightly different variations.

Here is one type of the scam online:

http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/lottery.asp (not the same as yours but similar in that it is an out of the country lottery)

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/264/RipOff0264830.htm (similar to yours with Global Alliance)

http://www.peoria.bbb.org/WWWRoot/SitePage.aspx?site=109&id=7de31629-fa72-47bf-8451-178d2592beb7&art=3485 (similar article)

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/322/RipOff0322683.htm (similar story)

If you ever win any type of prize from a sweepstakes, lottery, etc... you will almost always have to complete a prize afidavit form before any money is ever distributed to anyone, the company will check to make sure that you are not an employee, affiliate, or relative of any worker associated with the sweepstakes. You will almost always be notified of your winnings beforehand, and then it will normally take some time after notification until you get your money. You will rarely, if ever, just receive a check out of the blue from some sweepstakes that you entered with a check for a substantial prize. If any of the information that I have written sounds at all familiar to you and your situation, I would run away from this situation. Do not cash the check, do not go any further and report the check and scam to your state attorney general's office, the police and a few other agencies. Here is a link with instructions on who to report this to: http://contests.about.com/od/conttestscams/tp/reportingfraud.htm

Keep in mind that even if you check the validity of the check with your bank and the bank states that this is an actual account and there is money in the account to cover the check, there is a very good chance that the account information has been stolen and if you have cashed that check that the money will need to be given back. Usually this money is not still available (most people spend it)after waiting for awhile to see if anything happens and by this time and you will be assessed tons of fees and this will create real issues. Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance with this matter. Thank you for using Just Answer and please remember to leave feedback after you have clicked the Green Accept button. Have a great week.

If you decide to go any further with this you had better proceed with extreme caution and relly investigate everything. However, based on everything you have stated thus far, it is almost for sure a scam and I would recommend against cashing the check. Like I mentioned above, I received something from Global Alliance in Canada for $4,750 about 6 months ago and it was a complete scam. I investigated it quite heavily and reported the scam to the authorities and everyone else that I could think of in hopes that somehow the scam could be stopped.

In short because if the money came from an account that had its information stolen, the check would have been a bogus check and they would come after you for cashing a check with stolen information on it. They would need to refund that money back to the account it was taken from. The bank is not just going to sit back and eat it themselves. They are going to go back to the person who cashed the check. I know that may not seem fair, but that it the way it is.

I know exactly how you feel too that you could really use that money. I thought the same thing and I wanted to cash it pretty badly, but I knew inside when I recieved it that it was a scam. However, I researched it like you would not believe just to make sure with that slight glimmer of hope that I would find out that it would not be. That was not the case though, it was a scam and I am glad that I did not do anything with the check.