My wife is the manager of gated community where residents pay “rental” space on the land (averaging about $1000 a month).
Last month, a particular individual came in with a personal paper check (from a credit union) and paid his rent. Our park took the check and deposited it (Bank of America) - my wife took it to the bank personally. It got deposited and credited to his account. All good so far.
Yesterday, he comes in holding a copy of the same check that had been “washed” and used to drain his credit union account (his credit union sent him a copy). Someone had somehow removed her big stamp across it as well. My wife had a copy of his original check so was able to confirm that his signature was an exact match, not to mention that it was the same check number and date.
So how could this happen? Don’t banks scan and shred checks these days? Inside job? And wouldn’t the banks MICR detection have kicked it back? So weird.
Are they sure it’s the same physical check*? I would suggest that the check your wife took to the bank was never stolen, Someone stole the information off a check and printed new ones with it that they then used to deposit with their phone. It was a coincidence that the check number they used to drain the account was the same as the check number on the check they gave your wife.
We’ve had our business account drained, more than once, that way. In every case, they never used the original check, they made entirely new ones with the information they got. And they often end up using a check number that we’ve already used.
If she wants to dig further, she could ask him if he’s mailed checks to anyone that later stated they never got it (suggesting it was stolen out of the mail and used to make a new check, not that the intended recipient was involved). Similarly, if anyone has access to his account information (ie did he forget or lose his checkbook somewhere and went back to get it later?) it may have happened that way.
*Are the signatures exactly the same or did the forged check have a similar, but different, signature (maybe lifted off a different check)? In our case, the signatures weren’t even ours, in one case it was signed by the person the check was written to. One of the other times it wasn’t signed at all.
Perhaps the check accidentally made it into the normal trash rather than the shredder. Someone may have found it while dumpster diving. I actually don’t know how they handle paper checks now. I know in the past that the actual checks were saved. I would get them returned from the bank with my bank statement. I also remember going to my credit union (who didn’t return checks) and they were able go in the back and pull one of my old checks that I forgot to record in the register.
If BoA returns checks with the statement, then maybe he had his mail stolen and the forger got the check that way.
I don’t believe that check numbers matter when processing checks. I know when ordering checks I can put in any number as the starting number. I don’t recall ever seeing any warnings about not repeating check numbers.
Since she deposited the check at the bank, they should have video of it being deposited along with the transaction itself. That would be pretty solid proof that it happened after she gave the check to the teller. Perhaps the recorded video might show the check being mishandled somehow which enabled someone else to get a hold of it.
I didn’t see it of course, but my wife is sure it’s exact - in other words, the same signature, the date was an exact match as well. There were some other incidental artifacts on the check face that led her to conclude it was the same (original, anyway) check. I am making the assumption they washed the original. It’s possible they obtained a scan and altered that. But at that point, why not just create one from scratch. That way you could avoid the suspicion of the same check number.
It’s my wife - if she tells me she deposited it, I’m going to believe her. But anyway, that part is not in dispute. Our park got their money and he doesn’t owe anything for last month. He just doesn’t have the money to pay this month.
In the title you suggest a scam. Do you think your wife (or her employer) is getting scammed? I could see that being the case where the person shows her this check that went through, identical to the one he handed her, in hopes that she’d refund the payment to make things right. It doesn’t make sense but IME not all scammers think far enough ahead to realize why a con probably won’t work.
Also, you answered the question, I think, when you mentioned similar ‘artifacts’ on the two checks but when I asked if they were the same signature, I meant the same actual signature, as opposed to the same person’s signature, but lifted from somewhere else, but it sounds like they were.
For example if you saw my signature in two difference places, it looks the same, but if you look closer, you’d be able to tell it’s two signatures by the same person.
No, my wife, her employees and the company she works for did not get scammed. He paid with that check, she deposited it and it cleared.
Later, someone got it (or a copy of it) and altered it. Instead of the parks name it now read as an individual - I think she said “Bonny Schmitt”. So presumably “Bonny” got the money and the resident was scammed. He was bringing the check into her office to explain to her his account had been drained and why he wasn’t able to pay this months rent.
There is nothing she needs to do, or is out. It was just a mystery to her so she asked me about it. She knows this person enough to believe he’s not lying or making it up. He’s 82, recently widowed and on a fixed income.
Speaking as a former bank employee (granted, I was in IT, and didn’t deal directly with check processing), but ISTM that his credit union is the one who erred on this deal. Somehow, Bonny Schmitt got a hold of the original check (or a copy) and created a look-alike duplicate, except it was made out to her. She endorsed it, probably via mobile deposit as suggested above, and her bank accepted it. But when her bank attempted to clear the check through his credit union, the CU should have rejected it. The duplicate check number should have been flagged and the check sent back to the bank of first deposit.
His credit union should make it right with him. He did nothing wrong.
Absolutely agree. My wife suggested he go straight to his CU and do just that. He was reticent as it is over 2 1/2 hours away (Why? who knows). Hopefully he will get it straightened out. I was just curious as to how this could have happened. How a credit union could have let a check go through twice. Seems sloppy to me/.
Nowadays people assume some high tech hacking scenerio. In reality criminals are often clever but rarely smart. The old ways still work and are easier to pull off. Chances are this was from dumpster diving, mail theft or an inside job. Someone got ahold of the original check and washed it.
I don’t know if it’s possible to get the original check back from the bank. I used to get them in the mail but it’s all been electronic for years. If he still gets the checks sent to him his monthly statement might have been taken out of his mail. When we were going through my mother’s house I found cancelled checks back to the 1950s.
I would highly doubt it, particularly from BOA. Everything is imaged; the images you see on your bank statements come from the bank of first deposit. And I would think that BOA keeps rather tight tabs on all checks that are deposited at any and all branches.
The more I think about it, the more it seems that it might be an inside job.
I do remember back when I got paper statements that if I tore up a check I had made a mistake on, or if the check recipient did not cash it right away the bank statement had a row of asterisks where the missing check should have been and stated, “Checks out of order” or some such.
They could have just washed out the payee and endorsing signature.
But that assumes that they got ahold of the check itself. Since the check was deposited at a BOA branch, I don’t see how they got their hands on the check, particularly since it cleared both BOA and the credit union. Had to be an inside job.
Working on the assumption that OP’s wife is correct in that, other than who the check was written to, the forged check was “identical” to the original, it’s possible the forged check wasn’t washed, but rather someone took a picture/made a copy of it and printed a new one. If they deposited it with a phone, a printed copy (probably even if it’s B&W) will work. When someone was cashing checks against my business account, as far as I can tell, they just printed fake checks and used those. I imagine it could be ‘digitally’ washed, printed, filled out and deposited.
Just as an example, maybe he left it out where someone had access to it. Maybe, and I’m just putting this out there, OPs wife left it out and someone happened to walk into the office and take the opportunity to grab a picture of it. And, don’t discount the possibility that the check writer was involved somehow.
And, of course, it could certainly have been an inside [the bank] job.
I’ve been meaning to start a thread asking just that. Right now my business mailed someone a check which they never received. The check was cashed via a phone and the endorsement just had “chase bank” printed on it (likely done by the app or bank). Our bank has been trying to claw back the money for 2ish months now. My whole thing is that, if Chase can’t tell us who’s account that money was even deposited into…they should be giving it back to us.
Unrelated: A few years ago someone wrote a whole flurry of checks (and kept going even after closing the account and opening a new one). The police in the next city over got report from a bank of someone “acting suspicious”. The cops ended up finding a picture of one of our checks on the guy’s phone. A few weeks later, I got a call from a sheriff’s deputy in Texas (I’m in Wisconsin) because a janitor found a printout of the front and back of one of our checks in a college dorm garbage, thought it was odd and turned it into the police. IIRC the local police said the guy they picked up had a connection to Texas. But nothing ever became of any of that.
Seems like checks should be done away with. It seems like they are so easy to commit fraud around and the liability lies on the account owner that there should be better protections. Are we able to do a “check freeze” on accounts like we can with credit freezes? My main checking account, which typically has around $10K in, has no debit card to limit liability/risk. But if someone can just grab my ACH info and print up a fake check and steal that money, what the fuck?
I’m hoping someone with authoritative knowledge can come in and say that can’t happen. “You could put a scan of your check on the internet and your money is fine”. Typically, when I use checks it’s because I have to mail them to some 20th century company that refuses to modernize.
Paper checks are still very, very widely used for business to business transactions. My place probably writes 200 or so checks each month, mostly going to other businesses.
When we had that whole flurry of checks get cashed, the bank* suggested we enroll in their program where, each morning we’d see a list of checks that are ready to clear and we can okay (or decline) them. But they charged for it. IIRC, my reply was “I’m not paying you to stop giving away my money”. Keeping in mind that the forgers didn’t attempt to make the signarute resemble ours. Different handwriting, different name, one wasn’t signed at all.
And to make it worse, my WAG is that they got someone’s checking account creditials cashed the check into that account and quickly transferred it back out (maybe buying gift cards/crypto?). I have to assume, though I’m losing faith, cough Chase cough, that if they used their own bank account, it would be easy to track.
*actually credit union, and they treated us like shit during all of this.
You can not. Go online, find a generic picture of a check, type your checking account info over it, print it, fill it out, deposit it via your phone and I bet it goes through.
ISTM that if somebody has my ACH info (routing number and account number), they could initiate an ACH transfer and pull money out of my checking account. I’ve authorized a number of entities to do just this to pay bills. I’m not sure how it’s verified by my bank that it’s a valid business that’s requesting money from my account.