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A Man Walks into a Bank

ft.com

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Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#21

Post by Xylakant »

Tichy wrote: post #6

Could be some entirely different scam? Like they could write cheques in the names of old people with lots of money in the bank, then, if some people cash them in, they could approach them and ask for their money back. If some people comply and don't check carefully who the money originated from, they have extracted some money from random people who may or may not have noticed it. Not sure how cheques work in the US,…

We still have cheques in germany. They're rarely used and of limited usefulness in most cases, but if you want to hand over large amounts of money, they can be useful [1]. Our Ex-President Wulff notably received the loan for his house via check.

[1] Auctions for example, where the payment must be delivered immediately and cash would be impractical. Usually, in that case, a "Bundesbankscheck" is used which is as good as cash: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best%C3%A4tigter_Bundesbank-Sch...

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#22

Post by DanBC »

There's a reasonably well known scam where BadBob will order £2,500 worth of goods. The cheque will be sent, made out for £12,500.

BadBob then calls and tells you to cash the cheque, send the goods when the cheque clears, and to just money transfer the excess when the cheque clears.

As this story shows a cheque clearing means almost nothing. The bank will discover the fraudulent cheque, normally a long time after you've sent the goods and the extra cash to BadBob, and they will take the money off you.

You are out the time; the goods; and the extra cash.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#23

Post by Symmetry »

wrath wrote: post #7

Am I missing something here? The transit, bank and account number on the check must all be fake (or I would hope that this get-rick-quick company didn't actually send their real bank information!). So whether or not the check has non-negotiable printed on it is a mute point. The check cannot be routed anywhere and would have been flagged immediately. This is not the good ol' days of bank fraud, ala Catch Me If You Ca…

They might have just Photoshopped an image of a check the company had laying around, in which case the routing details, etc, would all be correct for some unlucky entity out there.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#25

Post by telemachos »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #20

I swear the entirety of this story used to be online. I suppose he took it off to help his sales, and I'm too lazy to find a cached version.

See three14's post[1] in this thread. He gives the link - the story is still online:

http://www.goodthink.com/writing/view_stories.cfm?id=11&...

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4344785

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#26

Post by dalore »

sudonim wrote: post #15
petenixey wrote: post #10

This story was from a little while back but what's to stop you just printing a cheque from someone else and paying it into a bank today? There's no alerting to the originator that a cheque's been paid out and there are no obvious authentication tokens on the cheques. Frank Abignale only had to get past an initial look-test so what techniques protect against (and are consistently used) to prevent cheque forgery today?

As far as I know, there are just 2 things preventing fraudulent checks: 1. Obscurity : Someone has to know your account number and routing code. 2. ... Ah, make that just one thing preventing fraudulent checks. It's scary. Any legitimate check, for any amount contains enough information to create a fraudulent check to drain a bank account.

What about signatures? Surely the signature has the match the one on file or the cheque bounces?

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#27

Post by corin_ »

A couple of people have already linked to the author's website where the original story is, but for those of you who (like me) read the FT article and then wanted the ending... rather than reading the entire, rather lengthy, story (which begins at http://www.goodthink.com/writing/view_stories.cfm?id=11&...) you can skip right to the conclusion at http://www.goodthink.com/writing/view_stories.cfm?id=11&... - just the first few paragraphs.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#29

Post by sudonim »

dalore wrote: post #26
sudonim wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, there are just 2 things preventing fraudulent checks: 1. Obscurity : Someone has to know your account number and routing code. 2. ... Ah, make that just one thing preventing fraudulent checks. It's scary. Any legitimate check, for any amount contains enough information to create a fraudulent check to drain a bank account.

What about signatures? Surely the signature has the match the one on file or the cheque bounces?

How would that process work?

Check gets deposited in ABC bank (issued by XYZ bank). ABC bank sends a scan of the check to XYZ bank. And XYZ bank has an employee whose job it is to look at every inbound check to make sure the signature matches? Or maybe they have computers to recognize the signature and compare them for similarities. If it's too different, then it's flagged and sent to an employee for further review?

I suppose it's possible that this happens. I honestly have no idea. Next time you write a check, sign it "Snoopy" and see if it still clears. My guess is that it would.

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