I got home from work this afternoon to a message on my answering machine. It’s my mother. I called her back and in the course of catching up on the past week, she told me about an incident that occurred. A woman apparently walked into a branch of the bank Mom and Dad have their account in and cashed a check whose funds were drawn on my parents’ account.
Except that the check wasn’t from their account. It was from the woman who brought the check in and a man with a similar name to my father–first and last, but a different middle name. Dad never does any of the bank business anyway. Mom always does. The folks at the bank know her very well by sight and name. The teller asked the woman if she had an account at that bank. She said yes, citing the names on the check as herself and her husband. The teller pulled up the account under my father’s name, not the man represented on the check. Different middle names, remember?
Apparently (I may have misunderstood her) there’s now a stop payment on the check, and when that happens, the bank takes the funds out of the account. That means $300 has been taken from my parents’ account. That’s a lot of money to them. Mom went to the bank and spoke to them about this. She asked for a copy of the check and they hassled her, but eventually gave it to her. The money’s not back in the account yet, which will be a problem very soon.
The main focus of Mom’s anger is the fact that the woman flat-out lied in saying she had an account at that bank, yet they let her by, enabling money to be taken from my parents’ account. The woman’s name was not similar to my mother’s either, which was a slight excuse for the man’s name.
Aren’t banks supposed to ask for a little more proof of an account?
That’s really bizarre. Even though my bank has a whole lot of dunderheads, I feel quite safe with them, because they make you show them 1) photo ID, 2) your bank card, 3) your bank account numbers before they’ll even think of doing any type of business with you. Kind of a pita, but relatively safe.
I hope everything works out for your parents. It goes without saying that the bank is completely in the wrong here.
I am assuming she spoke to the manager, as she is one to go as high as she can as quickly as possible, but she was still so angry, her telling of the story was a bit muddled.
Did this cheque–the one cashed by the woman who walked into the bank and bearing a first and last name (but not middle name) similar to your father’s–have routing and account numbers on it? Or was it a handwritten cheque sans the standard identifiers?
Regardless, this sounds like purely the bank’s error, and speaking to the branch director (if it’s a large bank) or the bank president (if it is a smaller one) should have the situation rectified immediately and without debate.
[hijack]While in college in a rural Midwestern town, I had to do my banking with a local bank, and they thumb-fucked me three times on this, once badly overdrawing my account owing to unsigned and unnumbered withdrawl slips by an individual with a similar sounding (but not identically spelled) name. In each case, talking to the head teller and/or the bank president (it was the headquarters branch that I banked out of) had the problem rectified in minutes, including the bank covering my overdraft charges on the one occasion that a merchant had one of my cheques bounce. I was not pleased with the continuing problem but a determined (and slightly pissed off) attitude resulted in a quick resolution.
It was a regular printed check with the account holder’s information–name, address, phone number, and driver’s license number–on it. It was from a bank in an entirely different part of the state that my mother had never even heard of. As far as I know, it had the routing and account numbers on it.
If it was from a different bank it should have a completely different routing number on it (and most probably a different account number). This sounds to be purely the bank’s error. I don’t know what kind of half-baked system they’re running there but checks are always primarily identified via routing and account number; I find it astonishing that a bank, even a small local one, would a) ufck-up in this way and, b) not immediately rectify the situation; after being notified of the error they are legally compelled to rectify the situation regardless of their own loss (which is their own fault for not verifying the cheque). This is the reason that most banks do not allow non-account holders–or people who can’t specifically verify their identity as an account holder–to cash cheques.
I’d suggest that a letter to the bank president, demanding immediate recompensation, would achieve the required response. Subsequent threats to contact the board of directors, the state attourney general’s office and the state banking association should place enough of a torch under someone’s arse to rectify the situation.
Oh, and to answer the question in the title, this is the bank’s fault, pure and simple. They’re holding the money bag, security is their responsibility. If they let some gimcracker walk in and scam them out of three Grants on such a transparent ruse that it their problem, not yours or your folks.
I called my mother to check with her about these things. She didn’t think it odd, since I am fully as nosy as she is. The check was indeed a regular check drawn on another bank. She did speak to the manager herself, and what’s more–when the account was pulled up, Mom’s name did not appear. (I’d been mistaken about that.) Only Dad’s. The thing is, Dad is not authorized to write checks on that account, as he has some problems that would make it unwise.
If they have had the account at that particular bank for any length of time at all, the first thing she should do is go to the bank when they open in the morning and if the amount has not been put back into the account yet, she should demand under no uncertain terms, that it WILL be back into the account within 10 minutes or she will take her business elsewhere.
She should also drop a very strong suggestion that the loon-e-toon that cashed the check, on the wrong account, from a different bank, without proper identification, be delt with appropriately.
So this check had a routing number and account number different from your parents’ account number? Sorry, having a hard time getting the visual, but if that’s the case, you’re saying that the bank ignored the check, pulled up the account by name rather than number, never verified the account number (or the name, for that matter), and handed out your parents’ money to a stranger?
Can’t give you legal advice, but I do suggest that first thing tomorrow Mom notifies the bank that they will be responsible for all of the foreseeable consequences of their negligent behavior, including paying all late fees, reconnection fees, etc., involved in having deprived your parents’ of their money without justification. In other words, your comment that “this will be a problem very soon” ought to be conveyed to the bank, along with the comment that it will be a problem for the bank, not for your parents.
Another person speaking up with IANAL/Banker advice.
First, all the above sounds good to me. But I’d add a slight twist, if possible. Inform the bank that if the money isn’t restored to the account post haste, the whole sordid tale about this nonsense will be taken to the local papers, TV, and appropriate government agencies. I do not think anything that the bank here has done is going to look good to anyone from any of those agencies.
I’d had one superior while I was in the Navy who’d had her bank account emptied by her then-housemate while she was on a cruise. When she got back and found out that her bank had given all her money to her housemate without asking for proper ID she learned a few things, and got a new hobby. She began going into banks where she’d had accounts and presenting withdrawl slips. When tellers forgot to ask for ID, she’d then go to the bank managers and demand that the teller in question be fired. Which the bank would do, because they don’t want the liability in that kind of mess. This may have been a different state than your parents’ bank, but I think the general principle is the same.
I may be misunderstanding this situation, but if the other woman claimed falsely that she had an account at the bank, then she committed fraud and theft against your mother, and your mother needs to call the police, pronto.
Calling the police has a couple of salutary effects:
It establishes that your mother considers the money to have been taken illegally from her account;
It makes it likely that the thief will be caught (and forced to recompense the bank); and
It puts pressure on the bank to fix the situation.
I’ve had checks stolen from me twice and cashed by the thief forging my signature on the back. In one case, they caught the thief. But in both cases, the party that cashed the check (a bank in one case, a grocery store in another) was forced to put the money back in my account; after that, I didn’t much care whether they caught the thief.
A crime has been committed, and not involving the police seems like a very bad idea to me.
Unless, of course, I’m really misunderstanding the story.
Daniel
Good deal. If she’s likely to vacillate on this, you might want to stay on her about it. I found when my checks were stolen that the police basically handled the entire situation, just telling me where I needed to go to make a statement and so forth.
I used to be a banker, and I’m sorry, but I’m having a bit of trouble following the plot. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there seem to be 4 players here:
Harimad-mom, who has checking account number 1234 at Muskmelon Bank.
Harimad-dad, who is a joint party on that account, but can’t make checks.
Harimad B. Smith, who has account number 9876 at Mechanical Bank.
Cynthia Q. Scammer, who walked out of Muskmelon Bank with $300 not belonging to her.
isn’t it possible that the person who cashed the check really did have an account and the teller assumed it was your dad’s account because the name was so similar?
in any case, it appears that this entire situation is much more dramatic than it really needs to be.
could you make a conference call (you and your mom) to the bank and ask how to have the debit reversed? fill out an affidavit, make a police report and bring a copy to the bank, etc?
i don’t understand the apparent issue with the “wrong bank” and “different account number”. my bank (and i’m sure many others) allows account holders to cash checks not written on their account so long as there are sufficent funds in their personal account to cover the check being cashed in the event that it is returned.
CantUseMyRealName, the only account at that bank with a name similar to my father’s is my parents’ account. There is no other account there under Dad’s Firstname Dad’s Lastname, regardless of middle name or initial. I know you can cash checks not written on your account at many banks–I do it at mine all the time. But that check should not have been cashed out from my parents’ account. It had no relation to them in any way, shape, or form. My parents had never even heard of the person before.
The money’s back in the account as of today and I don’t know what else is going on with it, since I only got to talk to Mom for about five minutes.
So the check was written on Harimad B. Smith’s account, right? With his check? And the teller handled it as if it was your mother’s check?
If that’s correct, then I don’t think that anyone here was running a scam. I just think that the teller was very, very stupid. Colossally stupid.
If this had happened at the bank where I used to work, everything would be made right, moneywise. The teller would get a warning only. Three warnings in a three month period, and the teller gets fired. As long as all errors are for under $1000.