Question

When I worked at the oil & gas company, we had a check for $250,000 for compressor rentals that was stolen and the payee name changed. The check was initially payable to a compressor company in PA. We wrote thousands of checks each month, when we reconciled the account we just made sure the check cleared in the proper amount. It did! However, the name was changed from the compressor company to an individual. The individual cashed the check and wired the money to a bank in California where the scheme originated. After about 2 months, the compressor company called us to say we missed a payment. We looked and said the check was cashed. So we requested a copy of the check and immediately you could see the check was altered. We notified the bank and they covered the loss because of the forgery of the payee name. They investigated and determined the individual was an innocent party and a victim of the fraud. They made him believe it was their check and if he deposited it and wired the money elsewhere, they would donate something to his favorite charity. It was part of the scam. The bank then informed us that they offered a Positive Pay service (that we had to pay for) but that would protect us from fraudulent checks. We signed up and sure enough a couple months later the same people tried to make a fraudulent check on our account (they had the account number, the signature of the CFO and the check number sequence). Positive Pay caught the check and we reported it as fraud. The perpetrators moved on after that! Fraud is amazing, if you think about how people come up with these schemes! Banks have to constantly be on guard.

Do you feel it is fair that the bank forces clients to pay for a service to protect their accounts? Do you feel it is the bank's responsiblity? Does anyone have any stories of check fraud?

Answer 1

It is the responsibility of the bank to check for the sign and account details and making to pay for that service is not viable.

The banks responsibilties include the checking the sign on behalf of the accout holder and also it should not allow to encash the check whenever there is a tampering or alteration on the face of the check.

Also it is on thebank to verify the correctness of the check when there is a tampering and that check shall not be allowed to be cleared without the prior intimation to the client who issued the check or it shall

order the payee to get the new check and cancel the old check and keep it on the checks discarded folder for any reference.

Its the banks who have to take these steps in order to curb the frauds but providing these as an additional services for the payment makes it business minded and client can sue the bank as such repsonsibility is on bank while it is incorporated as bank, there responbilties are imposed by the act under which it is incorporated.