Bank threatning over bounced checks

[bluewave]

My jurisdiction is: California

A client of my wife deposited a check into her business account in another sate. A day later her online account showed check cleared so she went to the bank and they gave her a cashier check for the amount of the check with which she paid her supplier.

Four days later the same client deposited another check in the amount of in the same out of state branch and the next day her bank showed check cleared. So she repeated the above process.

Now a five days later the bank is saying that both the checks bounced and they are threatening her with a fraud case and demanding their money back which she does not have anymore.

She did nothing wrong. She just relied on the bank information to go through the transaction.

She had filed a criminal police report against the client.

Need your opinion thanks

 

[Schwy]

Contract

When you open a bank the bank gives you papers to sign, application,credit info release, Ect...... In this paperwork should be the terms & policies that the bank has & you agree to when you sign. They should state under what terms they release deposited funds & terms for repayment of returned items
You might find that through bank error they violated the terms of the account holder agreement.

 

[sfitz]

What is your wife's relationship to the checkwriter?

A common scam is for someone to offer you money to cash his checks, which eventually turn out to be fraudulent. You are then stuck with paying the bank the money out of your own account. This is why banks check to see that you have enough money in your account to cover the amount of the check.

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Excellent post s_fitz. This is very true - and why it is important for you to file a police report. Essentially this puts you on the hot seat in the event your story is a fib - you can now be prosecuted for more than just simple fraud. In this instance, unless there is reason to believe you were a part of a fraud, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

That said, your friend may have been victim of a very common fraud that has been occurring on the Internet for years. 6 years ago a friend of mine was trying to sell her car and the buyer who responded wanted her to cash a check he was getting from a business for more than the value of the car and send her just half of the rest - the extra amount being for her inconvenience of dealing with an endorsed check. She was suspect of this immediately and it was the same scam that many people fall for every day. Amounts appear but they have not necessarily cleared.

Good luck with this - your wife's client may or may not be telling the whole truth...