A Man Walks into a Bank • Hacker News Board

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#181

Post by tatsuke95 » Tue, Aug 07, 2012, 4:27 PM UTC

M4v3R wrote: post #148

kristaps wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, sounds completely made up. Have any sources?

http://www.tvnwarszawa.pl/informacje,news,pociety-papier-war... In a nutshell: a guy had setup a corporate bank account, which at this particular bank enabled him to use a "nightly dropbox" in which you declare amount of money, then put it in a bag and put it in the dropbox. These bags are not scanned before your account is credited (I know, it's insane), so guy just withdrawed the money and dissapeared.

>"These bags are not scanned before your account is credited (I know, it's insane)"

It's not insane, it's incredibly efficient. Our whole "system" operates on trust. You can certainly find holes in the system if you so choose.

But don't kid yourself: these losses are built into the profit expectations of banks. And they'll try to catch you. If you want to be on the lam for the rest of your life for a million Euros, have fun.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#182

Post by dalore » Wed, Aug 08, 2012, 2:54 PM UTC

sudonim wrote: post #29

dalore wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would but I live in a country where cheques are considered archaic.

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#183

Post by JadeNB » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 10:50 PM UTC

albedoa wrote: post #158

mathmoi wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely don't check the signature. About a year ago, I altered the way I sign cheques. I used to sign my full name, now I just initials them. I got not problem, no cheque bounced.

Only you can define what your signature looks like. That is why you didn't have any issues. They don't check the signature against anything, if that's what you mean. See this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4345214 A few years ago, I was going through the process of changing my name. I was endorsing checks with my new name and depositing them into accounts with my old name -- a completely different name,…

> Only you can define what your signature looks like. That is why you didn't have any issues. They don't check the signature against anything, if that's what you mean. See this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4345214

This may be mostly true, or even universally true now, but it hasn't always been. I remember trying to make some major modification on an account with a local bank in Chicago around 2000 --maybe closing it?-- and the bank officer with whom I dealt actually brought out a physical record of my signature to compare against what I was currently signing. (Since I'd opened the account some years ago, it took me a long time to guess how I'd signed back then and to reproduce it successfully. For some reason, the officer was perfectly willing to let me try until I satisfied her, but not to accept that I was who my ID said I was.)

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#184

Post by webmonkeyuk » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 3:59 PM UTC

Off the back of this Hacker News post I went to see him perform yesterday evening here at the Edinburgh show.

It was a great and really animated show. I wish I'd just skimmed the FT article though as the first 10 mins were just going over that again!