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A Man Walks into a Bank

ft.com

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Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#111

Post by jj_aa »

aoprisan wrote: post #99
jj_aa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC from this guy's site, before it was a show, he had a stand-off with the bank for a while before learning that this check was holding up a merger between his bank and another company, so the whole executive suite was freaking out. Eventually he gave the check back with no repercussions and some token like a letter of apology.

he didn't apologize, the bank did. that was the whole point of him cashing $95k and holding it until the bank acknowledged that they screwed up.

sorry, should have clarified: I meant the bank was the one with the token apology, not the guy who deposited the check.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#112

Post by nostromo »

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?

You could similarly ask why people don't forge credit cards or banknotes. The short answer is: they do. :)

The long answer is that you're risking being caught and charged with fraud.

What's interesting about this story is that it's not clear any fraud had taken place -- although I doubt the bank sees it that way.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#113

Post by Splines »

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?

It's too bad there isn't some sort of reconfigurable QR code stamp thing that you can use to sign something. Say, for example, you enter in the payee, amount and date, it digitally signs it with your private key from your bank, creates a QR code with the data and moves tiny little stamp pins up/down and you press it onto the paper.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#114

Post by snowwrestler »

timkeller wrote: post #24

Remind me why we still have cheques in our banking system?

Because they work very well for certain types of payments.

Think about why this story is so noteworthy: because this sort of thing happens so rarely. The vast, vast majority of checks are written, sent, and cleared without fraud or incident.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#115

Post by wsh »

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?

For business checking accounts, many banks offer a "positive pay" service, where customers submit files with the dates, check numbers, and amounts of authorized checks they have issued, and only those checks are paid automatically; checks not listed in a file are automatically returned unpaid.

Variations on this service give the customer access to a Web site with a daily exceptions report, or to a list of all checks for amounts greater than some threshold, from which the customer can instruct the bank to pay some checks and return others. The default is usually to return the check unpaid, since Article 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code gives banks a strong incentive to return any item they aren't going to pay before midnight on the next banking day after it was received.

These services used to be fairly expensive, but I see that some banks are now offering them for free or for a modest fee ($40 a month at Chase), perhaps because they shift some responsibility for fraud control to the customer.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#116

Post by duaneb »

derda wrote: post #45

It amazes me everytime, that in the US day-to-day banking still consists mostly of writing, sending and cashing cheques. In germany (I dont know about the rest of Europe, but I guess the situation is similar), cheques are virtually non existent. You can still get and cash them, but you will get weird looks from the person behind the bank counter, most of the time there will be a hefty fee associated with it(I once ca…

It's free, personal money transfer that you can cancel if someone steals. What's not to like?

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#117

Post by duaneb »

ansgri wrote: post #108
veyron wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checks are still useful because most online transfer mechanisms cost money. For example, my bank recently started charging for ACH transfers, and wires are always expensive.

Can't you use cash? I honestly can't understand most of the comments as it seems here in Russia there's no concept of a check, or at least no 'real person' ever used anything like that.

Sure, but then someone can mug you. Credit cards and checks you can cancel.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#118

Post by YuriNiyazov »

veyron wrote: post #89
mrweasel wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card fees aren't onerous, not here in Denmark at least, I think Finland has a similar deal. Credit cards are issued by your bank, you pay one yearly fee, 175DKK around 30USD. More often than not the bank will give you a VISA debit card for free, or a Master Card with 30.000DKK limit, no interest if you pay the debt of each month (The bank will do the transfer from your account for free, assuming that you have…

Oh I meant fees to the recipient, There's a law in the US that requires CC merchants to charge the same price as they would with cash payment (for most goods; some, like gas, have special exemptions), so when you pay X dollars by credit card the merchant receives less than X dollars.

Could you verify that it is indeed a law? I keep on hearing different reports about this: some say that it is a law, some say that it is not a law, just a clause in the contract that the merchant and the CC network agree to.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#119

Post by ABS »

takluyver wrote: post #75
derda wrote: post #45

It amazes me everytime, that in the US day-to-day banking still consists mostly of writing, sending and cashing cheques. In germany (I dont know about the rest of Europe, but I guess the situation is similar), cheques are virtually non existent. You can still get and cash them, but you will get weird looks from the person behind the bank counter, most of the time there will be a hefty fee associated with it(I once ca…

In the UK, as in so many things, we're half way between Europe and the US. Cheques (spelled like that) are rarely used, but most people have a cheque book in a drawer somewhere. Bank transfers here are free, but the recipient has to give you their account number & sort code, so you might use a cheque to give money to a friend. Private landlords might require the rent as postdated cheques. If you send a membership for…

> Cheques (spelled like that) are rarely used

looking at all the people protesting the proposed removal of cheques in UK last year I'd say that's not the case :-)

Sadly many (relatively) big business and countless public bodies only pay and accepts payment by cheques. As an example only this year City of London Corp started accepting bank transfers for rent deposit. 2 years ago I had to dig up my business cheque book and bring a cheque to their offices for an office rent deposit.

Take a look at the "Treasury - Written Evidence - The end of Cheques?" http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/c...

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#120

Post by sch1705 »

Pretty sure this constitutes fraud. Plus doubt the cheque processing is still carried out as described in the story- doubt any bank today would credit the customer account based on a bogus cheque that couldn't be validated. Surprised this was published in the ft as sounds like an urban myth.
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