Scammers stole and rewrote a couple's tax check — the bank's response made everything worse

Joseph Cantara of Flushing, Queens, got caught successful a cheque washing scam — and not adjacent a bully one. He and his woman Margaret described to ABC 7 On Your Side (1) however their regular cheque for their quarterly spot taxes, made retired to the metropolis for $2,570.24, was altered to $9,995.00 “for 7 months of carnal therapy.”

"All of our printed accusation was crossed out. Our code was rewritten, different telephone number, rewritten," Joseph said.

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The mates enactment a halt outgo connected the cheque successful November 2025, but recovered wealth was withdrawn from their relationship conscionable a period later, connected Christmas Eve.

In spite of the evidently doctored check, the mates spent 3 months trying to resoluteness the issue, lone to extremity up with their slope relationship frozen for 3 weeks — incapable to entree their wealth oregon wage their bills.

Here’s wherefore you request to beryllium alert of cheque fraud, positive tips connected what to bash if you’re caught up successful a akin scam.

Scammers tin get their hands connected idiosyncratic checks successful a fig of ways (2). They tin beryllium stolen from message boxes oregon station offices, and tin sometimes beryllium taken from businesses by employees. These fraudsters are often a small much creaseless that the 1 who targeted the Cantaras: cheque washing schemes impact altering checks utilizing chemicals to interruption down ink without damaging the paper, usually resulting successful a forged cheque that looks legitimate.

Losing wealth to a forged cheque is atrocious enough, but the fraud doesn’t ever halt there. Personal accusation recovered connected stolen checks tin beryllium utilized by scammers to instrumentality retired loans oregon unfastened slope accounts successful the victim’s name. According to the U.S. Postal Service, Postal Inspectors uncover much than $1 cardinal successful counterfeit checks and wealth orders successful the U.S. each twelvemonth (3).

The worst portion of cheque fraud is that it tin beryllium hard to retrieve your stolen wealth if you don’t enactment quickly. The Illinois Educators Credit Union (IECU) warns galore fiscal institutions don’t connection implicit sum for cheque fraud that isn’t reported close distant (4). Many different banks connection partial extortion wrong 60 days. Therefore, it’s captious to support connected apical of your slope accounts if you regularly usage checks.