He made two errors: He should have stuck to smaller amounts. and not purchased equipment that could be identified.
Better to buy services that no one can see.
Interesting:
Someone did exactly what was discussed - copied cheques, forged new ones, and then submitted multiple copies via phone bank app. The old school business owner does not do online banking, so did not see the problem until he saw his bank statement much later. The bank is claiming it cannot refund all the cheques, only some, because others were not reported “in a timely manner”. Apparently a month or more later is “too late”. I strongly suspect the bank will lose this in court. But meanwhile, he’s out the money and may have to close his business.
I’m not so sure about the bank losing. I could have missed it, but I don’t think there was any mention of exactly what “timely” means or when he reported it . He says something about two days but it wasn’t clear exactly what it was in reference to . I know that I must notify my bank within 30 days of the state date for unauthorized checks - I suspect if the deadline is 2 days from the day the check was cashed , the bank will lose. But if the deadline was that short, I wonder why the bank refunded the money for sone of the checks.
Canadian law may well be significantly different from US law. But whatever the statute in Canada is, and assuming it is a brightline cut-off like US statute, it’s a good bet the bank knows what that cut-off is and has their computers programmed accordingly.
At least under US law, not reviewing statements timely is an excellent way to comprehensively lose all recourse against the banks if you get unlucky and get scammed.
See also this current thread.
Off-hand guess - if he’s checking bank statements, et;s say end of month cut-off. So someone cashes the fake cheque Aug 1st. The statement is generated first week in Sept and mailed out. The fellow gets it, and sometime within a week sits down to reconcile his books. So it could be legitimately up to 6 weeks between the cashing and the catching.
If the business is going under on $38,000 in losses I find it hard to believe that a cheque for $5,000 or more, unexplained, would be missed or ignored for an extra month. If the deadline is less than 6 weeks, I sppose the counter-argument is whether checking balances online is now a mandatory part of the banking process - I would presume otherwise the clock starts ticking when the account holder is notified, which would be when the statement is made.
Alternatively, I see a number of these sorts of problems, with banks and other big businesses, where the victim is told “sorry, your problem” only to have the situation re-evaluated and the vicitm compensated once it makes the national news. But yes, what’s missing from the story is more detail on the timing, and an evaluation of banking practices that presumably allowed someone to get away with cash at the end of the trail. If I as a new client open an account, and then just deposit a number of fairly large cheques, and then ask to withdraw it all in cash - that should have set off alarm bells for the bank doing that…
I am no expert in Canada law, and I am not sure that could happen in America. Maybe. But in America, your check is not valid without your signature. So, the bank would lose.
I think so, at least here. But I can not say for sure.
Also my bank contacts me for a large unusual check, so I am curious why this didnt happen. Does he normally write $9000 checks? Not to mention, $9000 should alert the Money laundering team- not that it would be suspicious by itself mind you, but their Money laundering alert system should kick that out.
Many strange things in this story.
My check is not valid without my signature - but there is definitely a time limit to notify the bank , even in the US. I can’t get a statement today that includes a fraudulent check , leave it unopened on my desk for months and expect the bank to take the loss when I notify them in November about a check that was forged in August/September.
It’s a business , so $9000 checks might not be unusual. In any event, my bank didn’t contact me regarding a $10,000 check I wrote to my daughter so apparently not every bank contacts the customer for a large check.
Ture, that is a possibility.
Maybe the bank knew it was your daughter?
Can’t see how - it’s a huge bank ( Citi -not a small one where I might be known personally) and the last name is an extremely common one - so common that I know of at least 5 people in NYC who share her first and last name.
My daughter is on the short list of people to whom I regularly transfer money. A couple of years ago I transferred £5,000 without raising any query.