If booze going through you turns to dust, perhaps you should see your doctor; that’s not normal. 
I worked with a guy in our small town who had savings accounts with both of the two banks in town. Right after work on Friday he would go to the bank that compounded monthly and move his money to the bank that compounded daily, and then back first thing Monday morning (or was it the opposite?) He was proud of “working” the system until we calculated how few cents he was earning over a year for all of his efforts.
At least he didn’t try to pay his Visa with his MasterCard.
My deceased first wife was a banking attorney. You’d be surprised how many times folks tried things like that. Or writing a check on one account, then transferring the money to a second account before the first check cleared then writing a second check on the second account for the same money. I always wondered how they expected this to work.
Reminds me of this scene from Life With Father.
Isn’t that pretty much the textbook definition of check kiting?
I know of one case where a friend paid her Visa card with her Visa card.
We were students, and although not starving, money could be tight. One month her Visa bill had a balance and she needed to save the cash in her bank account for frivolous things like food.
So she went in to the bank and took out a cash advance of $100. The teller counted it out and gave it to her.
She gave the cash back to the teller and said, “I’d like to make a partial payment on my Visa, please.”
The teller was dubious but took the money and entered it as a part-payment. It went through, and my friend didn’t have the credit record hit of not making the previous month’s payment. Had to pay interest on the balance, of course, but she had complied with the terms for monthly payment.
I paid off our credit cards by taking advantage of the “zero interest on transferred balances” deals that were all the rage in the 90’s. This only worked because we didn’t keep on adding to the credit card debt at the same time.
Sort of. These were folks who fully expected the bank wouldn’t catch on.
If you want even stupider involving credit cards…
About a decade in my state a man was arrested for using stolen credit cards. His girlfriend showed up to either bail him out or pay his fines(I don’t remember exactly which one.) Take a guess what she presented to pay for them!!
A STOLEN CREDIT CARD!!!
There is no cure for stupidity!! 
I have a friend that, as recently as six months ago, would pay via check although there were insufficient funds available because “I’ll have money in the bank by Monday so it’s o.k.”.
You have to let her do it. Otherwise it’s double jeopardy!
The late Sir Robert Mark’s memoirs include a story about his being charged with ‘negligent loss of government property, viz., one steel helmet’ [came off when he sank while was swimming across the lake on an exercise]. The sergeant major said, “The officer cadet pleads Not Guilty, sir. 'e produces a eight-figure map reference denoting precisely where it is. It is beyond 'is powers to recover it, sir.” The OC’s decision, taken without even looking up from the papers on his desk, was “Not Guilty, ordered to pay 9/6d for the cost of a replacement.”
My daughter has a Libertarian friend who is always at odds with the county over his fence height, or where he parks his tow truck etc, A while back he refinanced his house. He and his wife searched diligently for the highest possible interest rate. That would give them the highest possible tax deduction. So. they’d get the maximum return. He’d make money and screw the government. Couldn’t talk him out of it.
Modern ones (at least that I’ve seen) will also take your picture when you provide the sample, for precisely this reason.
Do you remember what they thought they were going to get? Did they think the government would make their Martha’s Vineyard house payment? That’s not really how any of that works.
Back when checks ruled this was really common, as any business owner would tell you. Of course, it rarely worked and often ended up costing people overdraft fees from the bank plus a service charge from the business. It’s amazing how many people would bounce a $10 check and get hit with $25+ in penalties. Also, depending where you lived, some banks would do you the “favor” of running your check twice to give you a chance to cover the balance. Often on the same day.
One several people have told me that I don’t know if it’s true or not. On Friday, people would write checks at 4 or 5 places, thinking that their paycheck would be deposited on Monday and cover everything. But banks would purposely run their checks thru first and then add the deposit. Voila! Five bounced checks plus fees.
I got one of those deals with a new credit card, but in addition to “zero interest on transferred balances” the new card gave me a bonus credit of something like $50. So I paid off the outstanding balance on one of my other cards, didn’t use the new card until it was going to start charging interest on the transferred balance, then paid off the balance. Collected my $50 credit, and then shortly after that cancelled the new card.
After my divorce, my ex failed to comply with one of the stipulations requiring her to take my name off of property she got in the the divorce. As a consequence, I was named in a lawsuit involving the property.
I was pissed off. My lawyer approached the judge from my divorce and he was pissed off. He ruled that any monies spent on my defense could be subtracted from my alimony payments.
My defense was going to be a slam dunk regardless of who defended me. But I found the most expensive real estate law group around and hired them. I called them daily for update phone conferences, which involved me, my lawyer, his clerk, and another person. I dragged out the calls.
By the time I won the suit, I’d paid the law group enough to cover my 5 years of alimony!
Years ago when I still accepted checks as payment, occasionally one would bounce and the person who wrote it would be pissed off at me for depositing it “too soon”.
It happened a long time ago, so I don’t remember what their scam was, only that it was dumb several ways over, and that they didn’t need the money anyway.
Check kiting was the reason for the failure of 15 Ponderosa Steakhouses in NE Ohio. The owner ended up writing 300 checks PER DAY to kite the scheme, 15 accounts but all with the same bank. Each day’s checks totaled about $5 million. It took the bank over a year and a half to catch the scheme and they lost $4.12 million.