Building society cheques: How secure?

That's a rather unlikely scenario. If buyer and seller are going to the trouble of being physically in a (bank or) BS branch at the same time, there seems no reason for going through the rigmarole of (and pay the fee for) having a BS cheque (or bank manager's cheque or even bank draft) issued at all.

The thing to do is to get the buyer to withdraw cash, and to ask the teller never even to hand the cash to the buyer, but to pay it straight into the seller's account (seller having brought his book of pre-printed pay-in slips with him). The teller may even dispense with counting the cash out and in again.

Can get much safer than that! Can you?

Reply to
Ronald Raygun
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You don't have to be a skilled forger to change the name on a cheque, hardly on a par with faking a bank note, or even forging a new cheque.

Possibly, but you don't see a warning like that on the Bank of England webpage do you?

The risk is less for a big company, their staff are hopefully trained in spotting altered/forged cheques, they have UV lights to check for alterations and anti-forgery pens, and most importantly they use services like equifax transax which insure them against fraud.

Completly different from Joe Public accepting a BS Cheque on his doorstep, even if he calls the BS to check.

Peter

Reply to
Peter King

stolen

So how does this crime work then? I'm trying to get my head round the sequence of events.

The thief presumably steals the cheque first, perhaps coming across it in a burglary. He then finds something for sale that happens to match the value of the cheque. He then agrees the sale with the unwary buyer, asks his name, and forges the name on the cheque. He probably has to forge the date too as a cheque dated before the date that the sale was agreed would be obviously suspect. He then needs to agree the sale and give the cheque to the buyer before the victim of the theft discovers the theft and reports it to the BS. It's unlikely a BS cheque would be requested too long before the victim of the theft intended to present it to whoever it was genuinely intended for, so it's unlikely to be very long before the theft is discovered.

The seller doesn't spot the forgery, phones the BS, gives the cheque number, amount, date and payee. The BS must keep no record of the date of the cheque or the payee, and can't have been informed of the theft when the seller phones, otherwise the plan falls through, and the seller can give the police a full description of the thief and possibly fingerprints as well.

Is that how it works?

The APACS advice is probably referring to the drawer of the cheque, ie the BS in this case. I would be more confident of a phone verified BS cheque than cash.

Which they use on cash too. So don't accept cash. Anyway when I presented a BS cheque to make my large purchases I'm pretty sure they didn't scrutinise the cheque using anything.

What, large companies insure themselves against losing a few grand?

Really? I await your explanation as to how this master crime works.

Reply to
Andy Pandy

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