Thanks for the heads up and reminder to be cautious.
Kind of unusual thing about that scam is a real person had to be at that address to receive the check, endorse the check, and cash the check. It would be near impossible to get law enforcement or a DA interested in criminal prosecution of a $240 fraud claim where they have to prove intent to deceive in the creation of the contract, not just a failure to perform.
You clearly have a breach of contract action (civil case). If you and they lived close enough to each other for it to be practical to drive to a courthouse with jurisdiction to file, have them served, and show up for a hearing, depending on the cost of small claims type court in your area, it might be worth pursuing on your own without a lawyer. But with them in an apartment in Texas and you in New York, the costs involved would be several thousand dollars at a minimum. Even if you got a judgement that included your costs (far from guaranteed), chances of collecting from a scammer renting an apartment isn’t great. They’d likely just ignore it because you can’t execute a judgement and seize assets from people who have no assets.
To me, the thing that really sucks is they can sit there in their home in Texas, pulling the same crap over and over with impunity because they know all of the above. Pretty disgusting.
Sorry this happened to you. Probably doesn’t make you feel any better, but before I retired, I dealt with a wide variety of fraud. I’ve known some really smart and business savvy people who, for a variety of reasons, lost money to scammers.
BTW, this is where they live per Google Maps.
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