darnzen on Nostr: At my shop today, we discovered that one of the checks we mailed out to pay a ...

At my shop today, we discovered that one of the checks we mailed out to pay a supplier had been cashed by a fraudster. Apparently, people have been stealing mail, finding checks to businesses, and just printing new checks with different payee on stock commercial type checks. I use a small regional bank. They said they've seen a massive uptick in this recently affecting tens of thousands of checks a week.

The bank cashed it even though it wasn't even close to the type of check we use... you know, the ones we get from the place the bank recommended. The signature was "close" but forged.

The bank said "Fill out this Affidavit and get it notarized."

So I spent a couple hours this afternoon trying to track down a notary, since no humans were answering phones today. Got it notarized, scanned, and emailed back.

The bank guy says, "Thanks, we will try to get your money back."

I'm like, "Wait, this is obvious fraud... you're not going to just transfer the cash into my account?" Nope. Need to investigate and try to recover from the other bank.

This is the system. They take our money and do the bare minimum to protect it. All the risk is on us. Even when they cash fraudulent checks that don't look like your standard checks. How difficult would it be to do some kind of comparison on the scanned checks? Not hard I think. A lot easier than matching the signatures, which are there to protect us. What a joke.

You know what doesn't have this problem? #Bitcoin.

#IHATEMYBANK