I remember this story flooding the Internet in 1995. I'm confused why the author is doing a "one-man comedic show" 17 years later.
He probably needs the money
A Man Walks into a Bank
61–70 of 184 posts
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#62It 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…
Checks are unheard of in Sweden at this point too. What is really annoying is I still do some consulting in the US and for some reason a lot of places will only pay a consultant with a paper check. Absolutely ridiculous. They have to mail the check across an ocean just for me to take a picture of it and deposit it back in the States.
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#63Judging by the numerous sold out shows[1] over the years I bet this fake cheque has actually helped him make a lot more than $95,093.35
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#64Remind me why we still have cheques in our banking system?
Same reason you still use miles and pounds and degrees Fahrenheit in your measurement system: inertia.
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#65To amuse: Dunno if things have changed here(UK) but a cheque can be (or could be) anything. It's just a bit of paper with some details on it. In fact, I'm not sure there is a requirement for it to actually be on paper. Legend has it some students in the UK banked a cow (yes a large moo moo thing) because it had the right details on it. Anyway, if this fake cheque had all the right details on it, or enough to make the…
The internet comes to the information rescue: http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-2043...
It was close enough to being a real cheque aside from 'non-negotiable' and a whole host of other things on it to make it invalid, except the law prevented those things from mattering which turned it into a real cheque. Seems a bit fishy, but if the law says that it was a valid cheque, and it's been paid there's very little they can do except sue, which of course is how any big boy wins a fight these days.
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#66It 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…
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.
Yeah, exactly.
I was going to try some new method (PopMoney?) to pay my roommate for rent and utilities, and then I noticed it cost $1 per transaction. Back to paper checks (= free).
It's not the fact that it costs something - a dollar is no big deal - it's the fact that the alternative is free.
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#67Earlier 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?
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.
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#68This 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.
This is why Knuth has stopped writing cheques, incidentally:
"Nowadays almost everybody knows that it's dangerous to reveal your credit card number, or to have that full number on a printed document that somebody might find in the trash. Soon people will learn that it is equally dangerous to reveal the numbers that are printed in plain sight on every check. Forget signatures; banks have no time to verify them. The once venerable system of checking accounts is irretrievably broken. Before long, companies will find it impossible to give out paychecks without exposing themselves to unacceptable risk.
One consequence of this debacle is, alas, that I can no longer write checks to reward the people who discover errors in my books. The system that I've been using has worked well for almost forty years; but recently I have had to close three checking accounts, and the criminal attacks on those accounts have caused significant grief to my bankers. (Certainly I do not believe that anybody who received one of my checks has been in any way a culprit. But all such recipients are entitled to bragging rights; therefore the numbers printed on those checks inevitably become known to random members of the public.) I cannot in good conscience continue to traumatize the people at my bank, who obviously have plenty of other things to worry about."
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#69Earlier 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.
Yeah, exactly. I was going to try some new method (PopMoney?) to pay my roommate for rent and utilities, and then I noticed it cost $1 per transaction. Back to paper checks (= free). It's not the fact that it costs something - a dollar is no big deal - it's the fact that the alternative is free.
This is the big problem with acquiring bitcoin right now, of course once you have it, transactions are very cheap.
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#70Earlier 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?
I'm 99% sure signatures only come into play in the event of a dispute.