"if it clears then it is good" (That's what you think!)

When does a check clear? Who has the authority to determine when it is paid? This is not a matter of idle concern to me, because I buy and sell on Ebay, and I've taken checks, and when I have, I've told people that I'd send out the item as soon as the check "cleared."

But what does "cleared" mean? Naturally, I always assumed that when the bank says the check has cleared and funds are available, that it means what it says.

I didn't know this before, but I was recently shocked to learn that this is not the case. Not if the check turns out to be phony:

The phony checks look real to you, and even look real to your bank. If you get one of these checks and deposit the money, it shows up in your account just like normal, but that's when the trouble begins.

The scam takes advantage of the fact that just because a check supposedly clears and the bank posts the money in your account, it doesn't mean the bank can't later take that money back if it finds out the check was a counterfeit.

Supposedly clears? It strikes me that either a check clears or it does not.

Common sense suggests that a check cannot clear and then later "unclear."

Unfortunately, the banking laws say otherwise:

That's just what happened to Jill Parker, a pharmaceutical company manager in Richmond, Virginia.

Using the popular Craigsist web site to rent an apartment she owned in Chicago, she was contacted by someone moving from London.

"He was going to send me a check for $25,000. I was to deduct what he owed me for the first months rent and the security deposit and then I was to wire the balance back to his agent, who was handling his furnishing," Parker said.

She took the check to her bank and called a few days later to see if it had cleared.

"He said the money is there, it cleared, it's there," she said.

So, as agreed, she wired the remainder, $21,000, thinking she was ahead by $4,000.

"Everything went fine until about a week later," Parker said.

The bank informed her the check was no good, and had been returned not paid. And she, not the bank, was out the money.

"We felt terrible to find out that we had been victimized," she said. "You feel very vulnerable."

Tens of thousands of Americans are asking the same questions, many of them targeted online through Craigslist and eBay.

"They send you a check and they over pay, and then they ask you to refund the difference and so it's a very quick transaction," said Postmaster General Jack Potter.

U.S. Postal Service officials say they have seized more than $2 billion worth of high quality counterfeit checks, coming from Nigeria, England, the Netherlands and Canada.

But many more phonies are getting through.

"Under federal law, banks are required to make money available according to a certain schedule," said American Bankers Association spokeswoman Nedda Feddis. "Certain funds, for example, have to be available on the day after deposit. And the fraudsters are taking advantage of that rule."

I think the banks should be liable, and not the customers, because the latter have the right to rely on the banks' apparent authority.

I also found this account of a customer who was told that he could not rely on what his own bank told him:

My family placed an ad to rent out an apartment. A person from out-of-town answered and sent a check after some phone calls and emails. Now we realize that it was a scam! In any case, the "renter" send a check for $3995 and asked us to send $2000 of it to a "furniture rental company" for him.

I went to my JP Morgan Chase bank and asked, how do I know the check is good. The teller told me that if it clears then it is good. So I deposit the check on 4/12 and was told by the teller and the info on the deposit slip that it will clear on 4/18. Then I called the bank 3 time and asked 3 different people how do I know a check is good. All of them said if it clears on 4/18 then it is good.

So on 4/18, the full $3995 was credited to my account, we sent a western union to the "furniture rental company". Then on 4/20, the bank retracted the $3995 amount and said it was a bad check. Obviously, by then, the western union money was claimed already and we never heard from the "renter" again.

Now, the part about the bank is that I asked 4 different employees how I can tell the check is good. All told me if the check clears on 4/18 then it is good. So my decisions were based on the bank's advice. I feel they are responsible for the loss. Am I right? Is there anything I can do? The branch manager said I have no recourse. So do I need to go to court, write to FDIC? What are my chances?

The answer, of course, is that he's SOL.

Even if "banks are required to make money available according to a certain schedule" as the spokesman says, I think banks should be required to disclose whether a check has actually cleared. If they falsely state that a check has cleared when it has not, it seems to me that they should be held liable, not the customer.

None of this is to say that the individuals in the above scenarios weren't lacking in common sense. I certainly would not put a large foreign check through my account and then send back the difference as these people did -- but then, I wouldn't imagine myself to have won the European Lottery because an email said so, either. Some people are more gullible than others. But isn't that why they need to be able to rely on what their banks tell them? Assuming these factual scenarios are accurate, I think the conduct of the banks in telling them checks have cleared when they haven't is indefensible.

The banks are in a superior position, and customers should have the right to rely on their assurances.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if one of these cases went to court.

MORE: As a news subject, the "cleared but not cleared" check story is starting to attract more attention:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Patricia Soens paid more than $400,000 in processing and other fees to claim a European lottery prize she was told she had won. After realizing she had been conned, she killed herself.

Soens, 56, of Louisiana, fell victim to one of a growing number of scams that use fake checks and the promise of easy money to lure people.

The schemes, which range from fake lotteries to work-at-home offers, exploit the fact that banks have to provide funds from checks, money orders and other financial instruments before they actually clear.

Again, banks should not be telling customers that checks have cleared when they have not.

posted by Eric on 10.11.07 at 12:00 PM





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Comments

I am hearing "Don't accept checks."

Period.

Larry Sheldon   ·  October 11, 2007 01:46 PM

In 1984 I had almost the same thing happen with a "bank check" which my banker at French Market Homestead told me was a "cashiers check" and the funds were immediately available on which a stop payment was issued and the credit reversed two weeks later.

It took five years to get a $4K settlement on a $10K check because they (my bank) had gone into receivership.

Richard   ·  October 11, 2007 02:47 PM

Hang on, because this is going to get very technical. After all, it's my day job (state banking regulator).

It appears that what you're defining as "cleared" is the timeframe within which banks must make available to you funds you have deposited. These timeframes are set by Federal Reserve Board Regulation CC, which implements the Expedited Funds Availability Act of 1987. By "make available", I mean that the amount shows on your account balance and you can withdraw same from the bank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedited_Funds_Availability_Act

Just because the bank has made the the deposited funds available to you under these timelines does not at all mean that the funds are irrevocably deposited to your account. The Reg CC timeframes do not in any way match up with the length of time it might actually take to determine that the check you deposited was drawn on a valid account at a real bank and that there really was money in that account. Your bank is required to give you access to the deposited funds before they know if the check you deposited is bogus.

If you deposit a forged check that appears to be drawn on a bank in your local area, Reg CC says the deposited amount must be made available to you within 2 business days. The back-office check clearing process simply doesn't work that fast. Your bank doesn't yet know that the deposited check is a forgery, yet they must make the funds available to you pursuant to Reg CC. Nothing in Reg CC states that funds made available to a depositor under its provision are guaranteed funds. If the deposited check turns out to be bogus, Reg CC explicitly allows for collection from the defrauded depositor.

Once the fraudulent check makes its way back to the bank upon which it was theoretically drawn and that bank rejects it because no such account exists, the funds flow reverses. The drawee bank (bank named on bunco check) refuses to pay that amount to your bank where you deposited the check. Since the bank has already made that amount available to you under Reg CC, it uses its rights under Article 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code to make good its loss by taking it out of your account.

Rule #1 when it comes to checks from people you don't know: Before depositing, call the bank printed on the check and ask if there are sufficient funds on deposit to pay the check. Banks are obligated to respond to these inquiries. If the bank named on the check has a branch in your area go to that branch, present the check to a teller, and ask the teller to give you a bank check for the amount of the check in your hand. If that bank's records show sufficient funds to pay the check, you'll walk out with a bank check in the same amount. If there aren't sufficient funds, at least you haven't artifically inflated your own checkbook balance with bogus money.

Captain Ned   ·  October 11, 2007 08:35 PM

Thanks for the valuable information. My problem is that the banks are lying to their customers if they say the check has cleared when it has not, because it is unfair to charge an ignorant customer with knowledge of complex banking law. Because I was relying on the articles I have to take issue with this:

It appears that what you're defining as "cleared" is the timeframe within which banks must make available to you funds you have deposited.
It is the banks who are doing the defining, not I.

They should be more careful about what they say. Their arrogance (again, if we assume these articles are true) reminds me of the airlines, and it's as if they're hiding behind government rules they're not fully disclosing.

Eric Scheie   ·  October 11, 2007 11:23 PM

Most banking computer systems have no way of letting the tellers know if a check you deposited has successfully been paid by the bank on which it was drawn. All they can see on their screens is that the funds have been made available to you per Reg CC timeframes. Unfortunately, there's no real way for your bank to know if the check you deposited will be paid by the other bank, as their first information that the check won't be paid is when they receive notice through the Fed check-clearing system that the check is coming back.

Asking your bank if a check is cleared will never get you the answer you're looking for. The only way to be sure a check is good is to call the bank it's drawn on.

What I'm hearing from you is that if a bank does not learn a deposited check is bad on or before the moment it must make the funds available to you under Reg CC the bank should then assume the risk of loss, not the depositor. Sorry, but that was not the intent of Reg CC. Reg CC originally came about because banks would not make deposited funds available on a timely basis, sometimes holding checks for weeks. Would you rather go back to that system if it meant that your risk of loss would go away?

Captain Ned   ·  October 12, 2007 02:58 PM

What I'm hearing from you is that if a bank does not learn a deposited check is bad on or before the moment it must make the funds available to you under Reg CC the bank should then assume the risk of loss, not the depositor.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that the banks should not be lying to their customers. They are in a position of having superior knowledge, and I think they have a basic duty to disclose what the law is, and they are obligated to point out that the availability of funds is a statutory requirement, and (most important) that it does not mean the check has cleared, or will clear.

Eric Scheie   ·  October 14, 2007 11:15 PM

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