I don’t understand the leap from being suspicious of a cheque, for whatever reason, you’re too dark, or too déclassé or whatever right and actually getting a person arrested.
Surely there’s a point in between those two where you see if the cheque is fake or not?
I can completely believe it.
If Chase is truly sorry they’ll pay up.
That would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.
Yea, especially when seeing if the check was real must’ve been trivial given that it came from the same bank. Even just pulling up his account info would show that the account was closed with the same balance as the amount of the check, which ought to pretty much close the matter right there.
I suspect they’ll pay up because they truly think a judge will make them if they don’t. They apparently ignored him for a year until he lawyered up.
No, I’m not kidding. They wanted us to learn about “right” and “wrong” choices, and some old professor dude thought that movie would learn us good.
But really, now that I think about it, it doesn’t. The guy who gets killed at the end wasn’t a roughneck like Ice T, his brother. He was the good one. If the movie has a moral, it’s not “If you make the right choices, you’ll succeed.” It was “Driveby’s are indiscriminant and will kill your black ass even if you do have a football scholarship. And don’t be bad like Ice T because your mother won’t love you as much and you’ll have a jheri curl.”
I actually think RandMcNally’s experience is crazier than mine. At least no one told us we were criminals (just that we’d be treated like we weren’t good enough, so we had to work harder than everyone else).
My experience was in college, so we were mature enough to just roll our eyes and laugh it off. But being singled out as a freshman in high school? That’s rough.
In retrospect I probably could have had a decent lawsuit if I would have pushed it. I really should have just said my piece and walk out of that room, but I was 13, I believe, and thought how things are supposed to be.
Obviously something went terribly wrong, and there is no way that this should have happened, but I would be interested to hear the bank’s version of events before being too hard on them.
I think it may go a *bit *beyond “He looked too dark-skinned to trust.” The bank asserts repeatedly that something looked odd about the cashier’s cheque. It seems strange to me that a bank employee whose specific role was the handling of large cheques didn’t recognize one from her own institution. If there was something about the cheque itself that might plausibly have raised suspicions, (eg; if she had been handling Chase cashier cheques for 5 years, and this was the first one that she had been presented with that varied from the others in ways X, Y, and Z,) then I might even be inclined to be a little bit more forgiving than usual there was an actual element of racial prejudice.
I don’t see that it has been mentioned at all, but Mr. Njoku is not merely dark-skinned, he is ethnically Nigerian. I think there are likely many good people, normally disapproving of racism, who might be led into similar error if a Nigerian fella presented them with a cashier’s cheque which varied substantially in its appearance from their expectation, insisting that they walk out the door with $8,463.21 in cash, when the last thing that would likely be showing on his record was that his account was closed for being substantially overdrawn.
Personally, if my last contact with a financial institution was screwing up my account to the point that they closed it and passed my debt on to a collections agency, I wouldn’t really have any expectation of walking back in with a cashier’s cheque and walking out the door with $8,463.21 in cash. That’s just not going to happen, no matter what color you are. Take that bad boy to some other bank (that doesn’t already honestly come by a healthy mistrust of you,) deposit it, and bob’s your uncle.
Of course, if someone took a look at him and said, “Aha! A black guy! Not gonna let this one get away with any funny business” and was already memorizing his description for the police report before they saw the cheque, then they should be fired. But I’d like to hear from someone apart from him and his lawyer before assuming that’s what happened.
If this were the case, the same process applies surely. Check and confirm it’s bogus before throwing someone in jail. Presumably if it was a cheque issued by her own institution it can’t have diverged that much from the cheques she normally handled.
Me to, but a year later they’re still apparently not talking about the incident other then to apologize and say its being investigated.
He seems to have settled with the bank without the need for a collection agency? The link said they took 600$ out of his account when they closed it to cover what he owed them and then sent him a check for the rest of his balance. I can’t imagine they would have sent him the 8k$ if he still owed them money.
Plus, if they looked up his account, presumably they’d also see that they’d closed his account with an amount of money equal to the check he’d just brought in, which ought to pretty strongly indicate that its legit.
Your saying that Morgan Chase paid him using a method that he shouldn’t have expected Morgan Chase to accept? I don’t think I agree. If I had a large check from Morgan Chase, thats where I’d go to cash it, since I’d figure that even if they had reason to be suspicious of me, it would be trivial for them to double check if the check was real.
And yet they say it did. Something (or some combination of things) led them to believe that having him arrested for attempted fraud was an appropriate course of action. Maybe I am naive, but “He was black” doesn’t really stand out to me as enough of a reason to make that judgement.
In their apology, the bank says “We are working quickly to understand all the details so we can reach a fair resolution.” I hope that they do reach a fair resolution, and quickly - but I also hope that we get to understand all the details as well.
No, the link says that they closed his account with him $600 in overdraft. He had previously applied for direct deposit from the IRS, and some time after his account was closed, a substantial tax rebate showed up. That’s when Chase took what was owing and issued the cashier’s cheque.
No, if they looked up his account, they would see that it had been closed with an overdraft.
[quote[Your saying that Morgan Chase paid him using a method that he shouldn’t have expected Morgan Chase to accept? I don’t think I agree. If I had a large check from Morgan Chase, thats where I’d go to cash it, since I’d figure that even if they had reason to be suspicious of me, it would be trivial for them to double check if the check was real.[/QUOTE]
It is not reasonable to expect to walk into any financial institution with a piece of paper and demand to walk out with cash, unless you have an established trust. It’s a bit silly to expect to be able to do this at a bank that doesn’t know you from Adam, and it’s sheer idiocy to think it’s going to fly at a bank that already has you pegged as a paper-hanger.
Add to that the business about “getting impatient” after 15 minutes and leaving doesn’t sound very good, and that’s from his own account of it. We’re told that the person that he was dealing with called “Bank Support” to ask for advice about the cheque. What were they told?
I just don’t think that it’s reasonable to look at this situation and single out race as the only significant factor to what happened. It clearly had the wrong outcome - but what was the actual chain of events? I hope we find out more.
Why in the world did he need ID to cash a bank-issued check, and why did they check his nonexisting account?
All you need to know is that the check is real and that the bank has the funds. The end.
They still have to match up the payee’s name with the person at the window.
I love how some people automatically think this incident is an example of racism. And when pressed to show any evidence for their assertion, they turn it back on the questioner by making them come up with examples of the same thing happeing to a white person. :rolleyes:
This is why “racism” is still prevalent today–many people will look at a situation like this and think it’s automatically an example of racism.
Yes, I would not assume it’s racism. It might be, or Chase might treat all its customers this badly. For it to be racism, there must be a policy or a pattern of behaviour.
*Arresting *him a day after he’d presented the check for cashing?
The talk that **RandMcNally **got as a freshman?
**monstro **being forced to watch Ice T’s acting?
I think it’s fair to call those racist unless and until some huge piece of previously unavailable information comes to light.
For comparison’s sake, I could see the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. ‘not racist’ if it came to light that James Earl Ray was holding up some white guy and accidentally fired and MLK was just a bystander.
And maybe monstro’s experience was some hazing incident he misinterpreted.
I hope he sues the bank for millions and they just give it to him without a fight
Do I have this right?
Guy comes in wanting to cash and $8,000+ check (a little unusual)
Guy’s account has been closed for previous overdraft (a bit suspicious)
Something looks a little odd about the bank check (teensy touch suspicious)
And when the teller calls for more information on the check, the patron… suddenly grabs it back and leaves (ULTRA INCREDIBLY SUSPICIOUS).
I feel sorry for the guy, I do hope he gets compensated for what happened to him but his actions in the bank branch were very indiciative of fraudulent activity.
ETA: I do not think the bank acted properly after that, I am just saying, up to that point his behavior was screaming fraud)
Here’s an image of the letter sent to Chase by his attorney. I have no idea why no apology was made until he hired an attorney and the case was publicized.