Chapter 5 HOW TO WRITE A CHECK TO PREVENT FORGING

How a Paying Teller Determines the Amount of a Check-Written Amount and Amount in Figures Conflict-Depositor Protected by Paying Teller-Chief Concern of Drawer of a Check-Transposing Figures-Writing a Check That Cannot Be Raised-Writers Who Are Easy Marks for Forgers-Safeguards for Those Who Write Checks-An Example of Raised Checks-Payable "To Bearer" is Always a Menace-Paying Teller and an Endorsement System Must Be Observed in Writing Checks-How a Check Must Be Written to Be Absolutely Safe-A Signature that Cannot Be Tampered with Without Detection-Paying Tellers Always Vigilant.

Among the casual patrons of the average bank there is a superstition that in presenting a check at a teller's window the amount of the check shall be determined by the amount spelled out in the body of the check, without regard to the figures written at the top or bottom of the slip.

Nothing could be farther from the facts as they are accepted at the bank window. As a matter of fact, when a check made out in this erroneous way comes to a teller's window he is most likely to refuse to pay either amount. There is no law, written or unwritten, to justify the paying of the amount spelled out in the body of the check, regardless of the group of figures on its face. This figure group is designed merely to check and justify the written amount, but if there is a discrepancy between the two amounts there is nothing to indicate that it is not the written amount that is wrong and the figure group that is right.

Under such circumstances the chief duty of the teller is to protect the depositor who has drawn the check on his bank. The person who presents the check for payment manifestly has been a party to the mistake in not having read over the check carefully before receiving it. If the payee is unknown to the teller and if the discrepancy is at all material, the teller turns the check back with the advice that the payee look up the drawer and have the error corrected.

In many cases of discrepancy between the two amounts on the face of a check the sum involved is the fractional part of the dollar at the end of the chief figures. This comes about through the drawer's concern over the main figures in the check. He is likely to write the amount in letters on the center line of the body of the check, affixing the fractional part of a dollar in the form of 100th parts of that unit. In writing the checking group in figures at the upper or lower corner of the slip, his chief concern is with the dollars and in his care he is likely to overlook the odd cents first entered on the face of the paper. Or if he attempts to write the figures "74" cents in repetition it is likely that they may be transposed to "47" cents in the operation.

How to write this check in order that it may not be tampered with and "raised" is something that has held the attentions and invited the inventive talents of many people, in and out of business. Even when the best of the chemical papers are used in the bank check the drawer of the paper may have not the slightest protection from "raising" at the hands of an expert. The manner in which the written and figure amounts on the face of the check are placed makes the material alteration of the amount easy beyond question.

For instance, the man who writes with a free, flowing, rounded hand and leaves roomy spaces everywhere between words and figures becomes an easy mark for a forger. This man is called upon to draw his check for $4, even. He takes his check book and in the dollar line writes the word "four" in his rounded hand, simply filling the rest of the lined space with the plain flourish of his pen. Then in the upper corner of the check he writes the attesting figure $4, with a dash after it. That makes it a cinch for an expert check raiser to make it $40 or $400 or $4,000.

Manifestly the only safeguard for such a check as this, even if it be drawn upon chemical paper, is for the drawer to follow close upon the written "four" with the blocking "No-100th" dollars, using the same fraction as closely after the figure "4" in the corner of the check. To leave no possible room after a final written or figure amount on a check is the best possible precaution against raising it. For with many checks the printed warning "Not good if drawn for more than one hundred dollars," is a worthless precaution. In the above example it is so, for the reason that raised as it is the amount still is within the limit. Had the check been drawn in the same style for "six" dollars, it would have been more easily and profitably raised to "sixty." In the same general manner a slovenly "two" may be raised to "twenty," "three" may be "thirty," "five" is made "fifty," "seven" becomes "seventy," "eight" becomes "eighty," and "nine" is transformed into "ninety"-all without erasures and without leaving telltale marks upon a chemical paper.

In this way the average check which is made payable "to bearer" may be a potential menace in a slow course through a dozen hands. While a bank may require the holder of a "bearer" check to indorse his name upon the back, that indorsement means nothing to him. The check is payable to the bearer and the teller must pay it if it appears all right and he is certain of the signature at the bottom.

For the average man who may write his checks at a desk, and who may be willing to observe some system in the writing, perhaps the safest and cheapest protection for his paper is to repeat in red-ink figures the amount for which the check is drawn, placing those figures on the signature line at the bottom in such a manner that the black-ink signature will be woven through the red-ink group. Virtually there is no way of getting around this form of duplicated amount. The red figures show plainly through the signature and cannot be changed without affecting the form and character of the signature itself. To affect a signature in this way is to call attention to the fraud instantly. A man may make a shaky mismove of the pen somewhere in the body of the check, and if it is not too prominent a teller may take a chance and pass it; but he will shy at a signature which isn't what it ought to be-that subtle sixth sense of the old teller prompts him to it before he knows why, and a paying teller is always vigilant.