Bank Error - NOT in your favor!

Meant to include quote:

“The NAS committee said polygraph testing rests on weak scientific underpinnings. And much of the available evidence for judging its validity lacks scientific rigor. “Almost a century of research in scientific psychology and physiology provides little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy,” says the report.”

I can’t believe they actually did a polygraph for a measly $80. I bet a polygraph costs more than $80 (especially if the government is doing it). Talk about using a shotgun to hunt flies.

There were also a bunch of uncashed checks. Checks have bank account information encoded into them and can cause problems for the account holders if they fall into the wrong hands.

See, you’re talking specifically about convictions there. I’m talking about expungements in general. Chicago’s rules are similar to what you’ve quoted re: convictions, but also provide for expungment if the conviction is set aside and the court finds you factually innocent by clear and convincing evidence which, I would assume, would apply in this case.

Once again, state laws vary, but I would like to explain that a conviction being “set aside” and “expunged” are not the same thing. In the former, law enforcement personnel are still able to view the record. In the latter, all records of the arrest are destroyed. From what I’ve been able to glean from the Internet, not all states have means to truly expunge a record. Oregon, for instance, will only set aside and seal your record. In my jurisdiction, there are means to expunge your record as well as a separate process and set of circumstances for sealing your record.

D’oh. I believe you already made this distinction above.

I’ve been looking on the internet, and I simply don’t understand. If you’ve been arrested and not convicted, or had the charges dropped against you, does this mean you still have a record? Because I can’t find any provision in Michigan address expungement if you have not been found guilty of a crime. Does your arrest record simply always stay with you?

depends on who’s reporting. local cops will issue a “Booking report”, some employers require that, and it does include arrests not resulting in charges.

I"ve run thousands of criminal record reports and have seen juvenile adjudications, arrests w/o conviction sometimes. they’ve changed some aspects ofthis, it used to register “record found” but specifics were left out after set aside, last one I helped w/, entire record was not viewable (except for lawenforcement, I’m sure)> in this case I would think expungement would be the case, hopefully she shouldnt be charged

I’m not talking about guilty or anything else. Just if you are arrested and booked, that will never go away no matter that no charges were filed or it was mistaken identity or what. For sure in Oklahoma anyway, and Arkansas. No matter what, you are arrested and that is not a thing that gets expunged because it was not illegal for them to arrest you. You have no grounds to have it removed, it harms nothing… they say… but … if a cop runs you, that arrest will pop up and it may have a code, longer than 3 years, longer than 7 years and not a thing about guilty, mistaken identity, nada. The only way the officer will find out that you were totally innocent is if he takes the time to go look it all up. Most street stops are not dealt with in that depth. Just if you pop an arrest record, you will be treated differently than if you did not pop up.

Is it MI law that they must tell you that if you get arrested and are a case of mistaken identity, that you can ( can you really in MI?) get the arrest to not show when a police officer does a check? How many folks don’t know that because they have not been stopped again? Are they told about it?

They expunge many things but the arrest record is very seldom gone.
YMMV

The World is Round,
It is Not Fair,
It is Just Damn Round !!!

Well, that is in your jurisdiction. In Illinois, the record is completely destroyed when it is expunged, meaning employers and law enforcement official cannot see the record.

Actually, let me make that a bit clearer. The Illinois State Police and the arresting agency are required to physically destroy your arrest materials should the order of expungement be granted. The Clerk of Court, however, seals the record, making it, in effect, invisible to the public (including law enforcement agencies). This record can only be viewed given a judge’s order.

IANAL and all that, but if this had happened to me, part of the settlement I would be asking for is for the bank’s legal staff to get my record expunged. My attitude would be, I got a record cause you guys screwed the pooch, so it is now up to you to unscrew said pooch. So get some of those $500/hr lawyers on this and get it fixed.

Did the tea leaves and the Magic 8-Ball confirm the polygraph results? :rolleyes:

That makes the notion of theft all the more unlikely – why not remove just the cash and deposit the checks (unless she were trying to alter them to be payable to herself, in which case they would have turned up after she attempted, successfully or otherwise, to cash them?

As I said in my post, checks have information encoded into them that can be used by thieves. Look at one of you bank checks. See all of those numbers on the bottom? Your account number is in there. The bank’s routing number is also on the check. In the right hands, that information can be used to transfer money electronically from the check writer’s bank account.

not in my experience (with folks who do stuff like that). Far easier to explain that the entire deposit went missing (“the bank musta screwed up”) vs. explain how the deposit went in, with the deposit slip mentioning cash, but only the cash went missing. (“Um, my dog eats cash, no really, he does”)

what was described is not an unusual crime, IME.

Certainly they are. Even if they were 100% accurate in detecting that the testee thought they were innocent or guilty, that doesn’t mean the testee really is innocent or guilty. Dudes confess all the time for srime they didn’t commit and a good number beleive they commited the crime. Otehr dudes may commit the crime but feel no guilt.

don’t have enough experience w/that sort of situation. What I have seen is that a “booking report” still existed after it was proven that the person was not, in fact, the actual theif. I’ve also known cases where some one else gave the other person’s name and a ‘close enough’ date of birth so that a background check on the name will show the badguy, but it’s wrong. (So the innocent person has to carry around w/them the fingerprint letter showing that the fingerprints associated w/the arrest do not belong to her).

One case I knew of, a woman with a VERY unusual name got into trouble. A close friend of hers also did around the same time. They both got sentenced to prison under the same name (the other was “Ephenigia Bullfrog aka Susan Jones”), and their prison numbers ('cause it happened so close together) were only a few digits off from each other, and since they were females, they did their time at the same institution (only 2 female facilities at the time), continually got each other’s mail, each other’s conduct and misconduct reports etc.

I can’t believe the police even use polygraphs! I guess it is no worse than asking psychics for help.

Polygraphs are roughly as accurate as Ouija boards, and anyone would be a damned fool to submit to one.

Polygraphs, in fact, made an appearance on Mythbusters last night, seeming to show that plants can read minds.