His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It's Gone | Hacker News Reader

His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It's Gone

nytimes.com

The fact that this was a rollover doesn't seem particularly relevant? I must be missing something.

Imagine I write a check and send it to a friend, but a thief intercepts it and cashes it.

First, this is fraud, meaning a criminal matter to be referred to the police. Surely the bank has records of exactly who cashed the check, and it would be trivial to file charges against the offender?

Secondly, the bank's inability to correctly authenticate the person cashing the check surely puts the financial responsibility on the bank, not the owner of the account?

What happens with check fraud normally? If someone writes a fake check and successfully withdraws money, isn't the bank liable?

My understanding is the the bank holding the account that the money was drawn from is liable to the victim, then the bank that payed the forged endorsement is in turn liable to that bank (since that's who they have the direct relationship with).

https://boatmanricci.com/who-is-responsible-in-the-case-of-c...

What's the point of having checks at all instead of just mailing cash, if stolen checks can be fraudulently cashed with no recourse?

I don't understand checks, but isn't it just paper that allows transfer of money to the person the check is addressed?

If so, what does it matter that someone else cashed it? Such transaction is unauthorized, it's a matter between the bank and the thief, and doesn't concern Mr. Handy.

What concerns Mr. Handy is Paychex refusing to honor the check. Presumably they are claiming he authorized transfer of money to a person that neither Paychex or Mr. Handy can identify.

Probably PayChex has a weak claim there :)

Again, I don't fully understand checks -- but my impression is that because a check is (often) addressed to a person, they are actually pretty safe. I'm assuming fraud is always the responsibility of the bank that failed to verify addressed person. Hence, why cashing a 100k check probably isn't easy to do -- stealing to check is probably the easy part. Cashing it without getting caught is the impressive part.

That said: In practice, I'd never want to use a check.

Yeah it should be the fault of the bank that didn't check things before cashing it.

There are various attempts to phase checks out, and switch to FedNow and RTP instant payment rails. Unfortunately, there is no legislation requiring a deadline to phase out paper instruments such as checks. Call your Congressional rep. The infra already exists, anyone dragging their feet has limited incentive to hurry up.

So he received the checks and mailed them to his bank but they were intercepted in the second leg and cashed out. Sounds like the fault is with the banks that cashed out the checks without adequate verification.

But how will small mom and pop banks be able to afford shiny towers downtown if they have to know every single customer? \s

Something's off here. IANAL, but I think the law is pretty clear that the bank that pays the forged endorser is on the hook for the loss. Maybe the checks were made out to cash or left blank, which if true seems like it would be clear negligence on the part of Paychex.

>In a court filing, it tried to wipe its hands of the matter, claiming that it had no fiduciary responsibility to Mr. Handy and that he had taken possession of the checks before the thief stole them.

Doesn't looks as clear cut as the title makes it to be.

There’s a question of which of the banks are liable, sort of.

The banks that sent and received the money are liable. It doesn’t matter who touched the check before the fraud occurred.

The bank would have a case if they could show the victim endorsed the check and then colluded with the thief to allow it to be intercepted. In that case, the fact that the victim had temporary possession of the check would matter.

Note that, if the courts rule otherwise, things get bad fast. Your bank account number is basically public (you provide it to anyone you write a check to or ACH transfer to). If anyone can use that number to forge and cash a check against any account, and the only threat of recourse is “the account holder recovers the money without the help of the banks”, then the US financial system will collapse.

> Without knowing the type, nobody can tell the I.R.S. later on what taxes to collect, if any, or tell the participant what he or she may owe. And guess what. With paper checks, you can just put words on them that help explain or signal what kind of account the money came from and where it’s supposed to end up.

Oh the irony.

How often is this happening? If criminals are aware that 401k transfers are done using cheques in the post, and some of the addresses these are typically sent to, then I'm expecting this to be a very common type of fraud. Yet the practice of 401k cheques in the mail continues? Weird.

https://archive.ph/rh76h

Seems straightforward to track down who cashed it and with what entity, and issue another check or do a wire transfer.

A couple of hinky issues here --

The statement from Mr. Handy indicates an amount of $114,000. That's very significant. However, the NYT mentions only $14,000. That's still a large number but, you know, an order of magnitude smaller. Where's the other $100K?

Also, what about enhanced scrutiny for such a large deposit/withdrawal? Aren't banks supposed to file extra paperwork if you're exceeding $10,000 or something? What happened, did the thieves go to an idiot branch or ATM or something? Can you drop into the CHECKS CASHED store on the corner in the ghetto and have your $14,000 [$114,000] worth of fraud?

Once when I took a girlfriend to see a film, we returned to find the car door slightly ajar. She had left her purse on the floor and it was still there. All good? Weeks later, it turned out that someone fraudulently filled and cashed a check that belonged in her checkbook. They had entered my car, found her checkbook, extracted the last one in the book sequence, and replaced everything without a trace. It's true that you need to safeguard your checks!

In Mr. Handy's case, what type of checks were they? Like an ordinary bank draft? There are cashier's checks and money orders too. You'd think that if this was such an important financial transaction that we'd be working with cashier's checks and certified mail. It also strikes me as so weird that they expected Mr. Handy to essentially be the middleman to receive checks he couldn't cash. They weren't made out to him! Why mail checks to him like he's a third party or mule!

Yes, NYT, this would've been far better accomplished by electronic means. There are a lot of things in your article that don't add up. Are we entirely sure that Mr. Handy is telling the whole truth here? Surely there are more irregularities to be uncovered!

"Where's the other $100K?"

As mentioned in the article, there were two accounts: a 401k and a Roth. The $14k was for one, the rest was the other.

"It also strikes me as so weird that they expected Mr. Handy to essentially be the middleman to receive checks he couldn't cash."

As mentioned in the article, that is standard practice, and has been for a very long time.

"There are a lot of things in your article that don't add up."

You didn't read the article closely enough.

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