Facebook user passes a bad check at my part time job, post an anonymous statement on her wall?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The computer store I work one day a week at got hit twice by some criminal who has been passing bad checks, writing checks from a closed account

she hit us for almost $2000 for two laptops, when the police were contacted, it turns out she was not unknown to them and is under investigation…

her M.O. is to hit jewelry and computer stores, make large purchases via check, and then the store is left holding the bag when the check goes BOING

From what the manager told me today, she has racked up almost $30,000 in bad check purchases, this is third hand info so I cannot vouch for the veracity of the info, if it’s true, why isn’t this <censored> in JAIL!:mad::mad:

anyway, turns out she has a Facebook page, I’m sorely tempted to create a throwaway FB account, and post a few statements on her Wall, something to the effect of “Jane Doe has been deliberately passing bad checks” or “Jane Doe, this is <computer store>, when will you be in to return those computers you stole via bad checks” or “Jane Doe passes bad checks, do not let this woman pay with checks”

I know I shouldn’t get involved, mind my own business, but this just pisses me off, according to the police (thirdhand info again, sorry) most of her local victims haven’t been prosecuting due to the headaches, time, and expense involved in prosecution

the computer store I’m working at is running on thin margins, and this loss could seriously negatively impact our bottom line, the owner has already been panicking about the store’s financial issues, heck, he’s considered laying me off from my one day part time position even before this <censored> screwed us over, things are grim at the store, and this doesn’t help

the manager wants to prosecute, I want to prosecute, but the owner is worrying that he may not have the funds/time/etc… to go after her for theft

I don’t want anyone else to be suckered by Ms. Doe, I’m sorely tempted to post a nasty Wall post or three, but should I get involved…

2

Stores still accept checks?

3

MacTech, I realize that it would make you feel better to call this woman out on FB. But answer me this: what good would it do? I can delete comments people place on my FB wall; anybody can. Or she can just block you. You’re not going to accomplish much.

Also think about the downside. I admit that I can’t think of a way this would come back at you off the top of my head, but it’s still possible. If you MUST do this, please make sure you open the account from a public computer (library or whatnot) as well as creating a dummy FB and email account.

You’re being the very opposite of helpful.

4

Not to hijack, but there was a thread on here about shredding checks from old accounts, and a poster said that when someone stole checks from his closed account, his new account at the same bank was charged. I’m just wondering if there’s anyway to deal with this through the woman’s bank, but I suppose they can’t do too much if this lady doesn’t bank with them anymore.

I have no idea re: the intentions of AClockworkMelon’s post and Skald****'s response, but I actually have heard of places, at least in NYC, that don’t accept checks for this reason.

Anyway, in regards to the OP…I don’t think posting on her FB is a good idea…it’s just silly and this is best handled through the proper authorities…what if she complains that she’s being harassed? They could easily trace that back to you.

5

Ideally, what should be done when a checking account is closed is to place a hard hold on it, forbidding both additional deposits and additonal withdrawals. Otherwise, when an account is nominally closed, a thief can re-open it by making a token deposit and then start writing checks. Doing that was probably easier 10 years ago whenI was in banking and there was a lot more float time on checks, of course.

6

That’s good to know…I have an old account, but I’m afraid to get rid of the checks…maybe I’ll go to my bank and ask them to do that so I can get rid of those checkbooks.

7

Bear in mind I left banking in 2002.

Why did you close the old account? When I was a bank CSR, if a person closed an account because of lost/stolen checks or any sort of fraud, I woul always do the hard hold as soon as I was sure all the transactions on the old account (checks already written by the account holder, check card transactions) had cleared. I’d also do it if the customer had pissed me or the bank off by repeatedly running up overdraft charges or something akin, along with a note not to open a new account for this person. But if the person were closing the account because he was moving to a new city or whatever I might not bother.

8

What makes you think this person would accept the friend request?
Also, you said you don’t want anyone else to get suckered by this person. I’m not sure why this would accomplish that. Stores typically don’t make it a policy to look at a check writer’s facebook wall before accepting a check from them.

9
  1. She’ll delete the posts as soon as she sees them, and block your account. You’ll be a three minute inconvenience, nothing more.
  2. Her friends/family on Facebook who do see the posts will react as though you are the bad guy and stick up for her. You’ll be accused by them of lying, harassment, vindictiveness and of not understanding that she was forced to do it but it is completely out of character and beside she had a bad childhood, and it’s a case of mistaken identity because she didn’t even do it anyway, etc.
  3. That’s about it. If you were hoping to appeal to her conscience, that’s pretty unlikely to happen. Anyone who passes $30k of bad checks is unlikely to have a conscience to bother. If you were hoping to incite backlash from people on her friends list, that’s pretty unlikely too. People have a funny habit of siding with the person they know, especially when the opposing party is an anonymous Facebook account. You’re not going to save other vendors from falling for her scam because a Facebook wall scan is not generally a part of loss-prevention procedures.

If you think it will make you feel better, go ahead, but realise that your actions won’t affect or change a thing. Hopefully the law will catch up with her sooner or later and she’ll reap what she’s sown then.

10

Skald****…I closed it to get an account with a better interest rate.

To address the part of the OP where he says his boss is concerned about the money involved in prosecuting this…what about getting a public defender or pro bono lawyer? This seems like something that’s pretty open and shut, you wouldn’t need some expensive fancy pants lawyer to nail her. I highly doubt anything like this would even go to court…that’s where the expense would be coming from, right? She’d probably just agree to a plea and pay a fine/get probation.

11

That makes sense, though at my bank we’d just have changed the account type; it would be trivially easy and less work for the bank than opening a new account.

I’d still destroy all those checks. In fact I would even do the hard hold (if your bank does that – remember that I’m 8 years out of date), to prevent a bank employee from coming across the account number, making a note of it, ordering checks from a third party provider, and going to town. You could get it fixed but it’s a pain in the ass.

Why, yes, bank employees sometimes do go around looking at accounts for the hell of it. I knew every detail of a certain famous pop star’s account at one time, and I wasn’t even being criminal.

I took MacTech’s boss’s concern to be getting recompense for the lost monies and merchandise. The fraud artist probably sold the merchandise, so it’s not going to be easily recoverable, and getting the money back is going to be a civil concern. If the money’s been spent it might not be worth the effort.

12

I don’t know why they didn’t change the account type…maybe the individual who did it for me was a newb and didn’t realize that made more sense. Anyway, next time I’m there I’ll ask them about the hard hold. It didn’t even occur to me that a bank employee could do something shady with the old account.

Re: the OP, wouldn’t pursuing criminal charges be an avenue for recovering his lost revenue? Maybe this varies by state, or maybe it’s flat out illegal, but could they garnish her wages to pay back the debt if she were successfully prosecuted? The closest situation I know to this is, I had a manager who stole about $10,000 from the store I used to work at and she was obligated to pay it back (police were involved). Her mother brought back the unspent bags of cash (the manager was putting nightly deposits in her purse, instead of the bank)and the manager makes periodic drop offs to pay off the balance.

Edit: I should add that in the case of my store getting the money back seemed to be a criminal concern…unless they just got lucky that she agreed to pay it back.

13

This must be a state to state type thing. In my state (or at least in the city where I work), all I have to do is send a registered letter to the address on the check requesting them to make the check good. After that, I hand the check over to the police and they take it from there. IIRC I ended up collecting the money about 50% of the time I turned it over to the police (we use Telecheck now, so it’s not really a concern anymore).

14

Dude it’s the store’s problem not yours.

You my friend are being scammed by the store. If a $2,000 loss is going to break your business, you’re already on the way out.

You do realize insurance covers loss, telechecks will minimize bad checks and pay if they approve on later to be found bad.

Who ever is telling the OP that this loss could put them over the edge is lying to him.

Oh I’m not saying this isn’t true, what I’m saying is this loss being used as an excuse by management to get rid of the OP. They are in over their heads and want a cheap excuse to lay you off, without making themselves feel bad.

So don’t get yourself worked up. Now as soon as the OP is done reading this, I would strongly suggest, you get your resume in order and by Monday morning start applying for other jobs, 'cause if $2,000 is gonna break them, your future is already decided.

I’m not saying the owner of the business is lying, lots of businesses run on razor thin margins. But if you’re future and rent and food is pegged to one of them, you should be looking for a new job yesterday, ‘cause you are going to be looking for months just to get a job. So get crackin’ now.

I understand the OP anger, I had my own business and you get ripped off, but it’s part of doing business. You plan and budget for shrinkage. Yes it hurts and hurts a lot, but it’s budgeted or should be, just like electricity and rent.

15

I already have a good full-time job with benefits, this part time job is just so I can have a little spending cash for toys and hobbies, as well as a way of learning more about the Windows side of the computer world, kinda’ like a vocational school that pays me to go to it

if I get “laid off” it wouldn’t affect me at all, I’d just grab another part time job, or see if I could get overtime at my full time job, I’m well liked at both jobs, in fact, the manager at the part time job told me about openings at where I’m working full time now and put in a good word for me

the new job generally hires staff through a temp agency, and very rarely does direct-hire, I was one of the rare people they direct-hired

and yes, the owner does tend to panic and overreact, everything’s either going great or falling apart around his ears, depends on his mood when he wakes up in the morning I guess…

now that I’ve had some time to think about it, i’m gonna let the matter drop, it’s not my problem to deal with, I’m only there on Saturday, mainly so the only other staffer (the manager) can have a day off, otherwise he’d be working 10 hour workdays 6 days a week and never have time for his family, sometimes he’s there until mid afternoon, but he generally takes off early those days

even though I’m a part timer, they trust me with a set of keys to open/close the store and an alarm code, if they could afford to bring me on for more hours, they would, but they can barely afford me now…

16

Why don’t they give you an extra day and give the manager another day off so he has a more normal work schedule? I don’t know the specifics of your workplace, but in my experience people being overextended/overwhelmed can lead to stress that manifests itself as freak outs regarding random work related things, such as how the business is doing in this instance.

17

Frankly, I’m amazed that the store accepted a cheque and allowed the merchandise to disappear before the damn thing cleared.

Around here it’s standard that if you want to pay by personal / company cheque a three day hold is placed on the goods.

Not happy with that? Then go get cash OR use your issuing bank to buy a cashier’s order (issuing bank can clear the funds on the spot).

Sorry, it doesn’t help much, but frankly speaking, if you’re dumb enough to accept a personal cheque you deserve to be scammed.

18

Based on your spelling of check, you do not live in the U.S. Checks are still de rigour over here in the U.S. And it doesnt’ take 3 days to clear a check–while it takes that long to get the money out, a hold is put on the account when the check is turned in, which is often right at the point of sale.

And do you realize how easy it is to fake a cashier’s check? It’s the oldest scam in the book. And why in the world did you leave out checking cards?

19

I hear there is an ethical principle that calls for company employees not to engage in things like this in web forums that are primarily for personal use, especially when the employee is in the forum as an individual and not as an official representative of the company. The particular case I first heard this about involved a company’s product being incorrectly described in a forum conversation; the company told its employees that it hoped a more accurate description would come along, but that it didn’t want the employees trying to fix things. I think the more general consideration is that in publicly visible places, the company should be able to manage the things said on its behalf in some kind of strategic way. This is why employees are often asked to pass sensitive questions along to a designated spokesperson.

It seems to me that accusing somebody of illegal behavior would be a particularly sensitive example of this kind of issue.

20

Napier, I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but it’s not helpful. MachTech was already told that pranking her facebook won’t do much of anything, and it won’t. It’s a one-day part time job at a computer store, not some marketing vice president at a Fortune 500 company. So thanks for making the air a little warmer in here, I guess.