I used to be a bank teller and we were instructed under no uncertain terms to hand over whatever we had and enjoy a week of paid vacation to recover from any potential trauma suffered.
The bank I worked for had a corporate security team who wouldn’t even stop their lunch break to review one isolated robbery, instead they’d look for serial cases, or occasionally assess how likely it was that it had any “inside job” elements if the robbery didn’t fall within standard profiles.
The actual “vault” in most branches is barely bigger than a high school locker inside the room behind the big metal door. Most everything else kept behind that huge metal door is administrative or customer related documents (arguably worth more than the cash itself!).
Lastly, about once a week, I was tasked with filling the ATMs for a branch that was in a downtown office building lobby. The ATMs were in a wall and had a little secret door that I’d access to audit the machines and count the money I’d refill them with. Each machine could hold 200k or so and there were two of them but there was no real clear way to get the $400,000 from our secured vault to the machines without armed security or something. In order to avoid having to order an escort every time, we’d just load the cash into a printer paper box and stealthily walk it across the lobby like I was just carrying actual printer paper (insert your federal reserve jokes here).
It’d take 2-3 hours to audit and refill the machines, meaning I would have had a nice head start if I had the guts and gray morality to make a run for it.
Later on, he got clean and sober and told his sponsor about the episode. Part of recovery is that you're supposed to be willing to make amends for the damage you've done. His sponsor thought about that one, and said, "You know what? I think we're going to let that one pass." Probably a good decision.
I’d guess my average teller drawer value was somewhere between 2-5k “unlocked” and maybe another 5k kept locked below my station. Not exactly “let’s leave the country and live like kings” money.
As a side note, I met him as he was dying of cancer, and my friend would help take care of him. Id pitch in, but it was mostly my friend doing the day-to-day helping. Absolutely f*ing heartbreaking. There was no one else in his life - no friends, no family, nothing. He was bitter and alone. It was brutal watching him die over a few months.
I guess it makes sense that he quit robbing banks once he got caught.
He got out from prison before he died?
How did he spend the days alone before he got cancer
The policies across the board are to just hand over money. As a result, there's essentially zero fatalities from bank robbery. Maybe a few every year, usually the criminal themselves.
However, bank robbers only get away with about 10% of cases. Clearance rates are super, super high now. And because they're usually serial, almost every single bank robber gets caught. There's a whole slew of tactics used.
Makes perfect sense. They lose a few bucks, vs the $$$$ they'd have to pay in the lawsuit. Let the cops deal with the crooks.
I vaguely recall it's part of FDIC even.
That's not how insurance works. If you file claims against the insurance company, they pay the claim, but your rates go up to cover it. YOU wind up paying.
1. Not my name for the payer
2. An out-of-state address
3. Check was not on my bank's paper, they did the logo wrong, etc.
4. Signature was someone else's
Essentially, everything was wrong but the account number. The bank cashed the check, and blamed me. I got very angry about that, and basically sat in the manager's office until he agreed to refund my money.
A couple months later, I ran out of blank checks, and went to the bank to order more. They gave me a song-and-dance about the advanced "security paper" for the expensive check blanks they wanted to sell me. I literally laughed, and told them you guys don't check the name, the address, the signature, and certainly not the paper, and walked out and bought more checks from an online company.
Also, the image of the bad check was what got my money refunded. An electronic trail is simply not as good as a paper one when there's a dispute. A cancelled check is gold in a dispute.
The fact “bad checks” can exist is the problem, which necessitates the use of a literal paper trail.
It is insane.
Maybe FedNow will change things?
The real answer is more prevalance of free ACH transfers. Some companies still like to charge the unneeded credit card fee for those too sadly.
There's only one thing I (typically) use them for nowadays but they do occasionally come in handy at times.
"why is this gate here, let's take it down!"
type comment?
Checks are extremely useful to individuals. You can pay for something, it has no overhead, and you have your own audit trail.
You can probably fake a fax machine or a certified letter too, but I think they are useful too.
The US has a ridiculous level of bank/payment fraud compared to Europe (~15x in some areas, according to the fed), who invested in chip+pin, SEPA, IBAN, etc etc. This all lets me pay for something with no overhead and maintain my own audit trail in a way that doesn’t involve a trust-based system from the 1800s.
The US also has strong consumer protection laws.
I remember a friend of mine had a father in mexico and someone misused his bank card and he was SOL.
In the US, there are laws protecting credit card holders. The most that can be lost is $50 (or $500 in cases of extreme negligence).
What is really happening is that with minimized repercussions a lot of things have almost been decriminalized.
In both cases neither the bank nor I have done anything wrong. We’re both literally victims of a crime. And through the payments system and the justice system we’ll hopefully be made whole in the end. But the difference is the incentives. When I lose the money the bank has less of an incentive to rectify the situation.
But those are pretty much edge cases. Credit builder and secured credit cards exist for people with poor or no credit.
Costco, gas stations, and some mom & pop shops really want to save on that credit card processing fee.
Personally, I consider missing out on the cash discount at a gas station a convenience & fraud protection fee.
They now have a deal with Visa, along with their own branded Visa card but will accept any bank's Visa card.
I wrote about the story here:
https://www.zainrizvi.io/blog/how-banks-help-scammers-with-t...
As cruel as it sounds, your sister performed a legitimate transaction.
It seems to me that a person ought to be able to reasonably rely on a bank acting like a check has cleared, at least after some clearly stated period of time.
There isn’t a dependency.
The legitimate account holder said “Send $x from my account to y” and the bank did.
There was no fraud in that transaction.
As for your second point - funds are required to be available before the check clears by federal law. Complain to your congresscritter, not the bank.
Not sure why I’m getting downvoted for stating simple facts...
Fixing that wouldn't require a change to the funds availability policy, and wouldn't require it to dishonor any transactions. As the original complaint indicated, it would literally just be a UI tweak: the online banking system could highlight provisionally available funds differently from really really available funds, and in that way communicate to customers what is actually cleared and safe to spend. This isn't a big ask.
In addition to protecting account holders from a massive range of fake check scams, that would also protect them from a bunch of other crooked stuff.
For example: did you know an employer can reverse a direct deposit of a paycheck for some amount of time after it seems to go through?[1] Employees get screwed all the time when their employer randomly decides "oops, we paid you too much" after the money is already spent. Which is insane and unfair but---we wouldn't even have to change the system to protect many employees. Just have banks clearly indicate which direct deposits are final and which might still go poof if the employer unilaterally decides.
[1] old example https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/23/business/turning-direct-d... --- but I know people to whom this has happened this year.
Once the check is disputed, the money gets yanked back from the depositor’s account. That’s why personal checks are just a completely unreliable method of payment and should only be used between trusting parties.
Welcome to HN.
Your card gets stolen.
Scammer empties out the account.
With a credit card, transactions against the card will get declined after it maxes out (if the fraud checks don't kick in sooner). You report the theft. Everything solves itself quickly. A minor inconvenience at worst.
When your debit card gets stolen, that's YOUR money going out, then your rent check bounces, and it takes weeks to get the money back, and in the meantime, YOU HAVE NO MONEY.
[1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/credit-cards/merchants-vi...
Speaking as a citizen of a country with "real" identification laws, how would you like the banks to identify you?
SSN? Absolutely not. That number is not meant to be used as formal identification, it's completely unprotected.
America has a particular weakness to identify fraud because you don't have an identity system.
My ID number is formally defined in law, protected and verified by various check sums built into the number (like so many tokens out there). Banks are required, by law, to ensure they have identified the right individual before transacting and they carry the full burden if they get it wrong.
The SSN in the US is sequential and I never fail to laugh at the idea of forcing your banks to verify you with such a flimsy structure. It's just gonna make the problem worse
These days, you're CUSTOMER #52219945 at SuperUltraMegaBank with such-and-such mother's maiden name. The local bank employees live 80 miles away where there are cheaper houses, and to them you're just one of thousands of customers in their corporate database. But, you never even see each other because almost all of the banking you do is via their web site, with the occasional telephone call that gets answered by a teller in southeast Asia. It's totally impersonal.
If I walk into a bank with a gun and demand money, everyone agrees I am robbing the bank. But if I walk into your bank and claim to be you, suddenly I am not robbing the bank. I am committing "identity theft," and the bank will take no responsibility and do as little as legally possible to help resolve the situation.
It is a neat trick.
Pass all the expense of being a victim of a crime down to your customers.