What can I do with “stale” checks? Can I deposit/cash them?
"Check is an obligation to pay, and is unconditional. In the US, checks don't expire (there are countries where they do). Endorsements such as ""void after X days"" are meaningless and don't affect the obligation to pay. The bank is under no obligation to honor a check that is more than 6 months old (based on the date on the check, of course). This is from the Unified Commercial Code 4-404. However, this refers to the bank, not to the person who gave you the check. The bank may pay, if the check is deposited in good faith and there's nothing wrong with it or with the account. So the first thing you can do is deposit the check. If asked - you can say that the person just wrote the wrong date, which is true. Worst case the check bounces. If the check bounces - you can start with demand letters and small claim courts. The obligation to pay doesn't go away unless satisfied, i.e.: paid." You should write a demand letter immediately, send the letter by certified mail, and then wait 30 days. Here is a sample demand letter for the state of california that you can send: http://www.courts.ca.gov/11151.htm It seems like most of the demand letters assumed that you tried to cash the check and incurred a service fee. Personally, I wouldn't risk incurring even most cost. Instead, after 30 days, I would take him to small claims court and show all the evidence you have (checks, receipts, and letters of correspondence). Find smaller payments he can make. Maybe a % of each client he takes payment from.  Consult with a lawyer or google buisness contract elements and find fill them out and see what he can do. If the checks are no good bouncing them isn't going to help anything. Nor is getting a judgment from a small claims court. He can still not pay(though stays on his credit for 25 years), file for bankruptcy, etc.
Almost any financial institution has the technical ability to do this (simply called sweeps, auto sweeps, or deposit sweeps); the issue you face is finding an institution that is willing to do it for you.  I think you will have the most luck at your primary financial institution where you currently keep the majority of your banking relationship.  You will have better luck at small-town banks and credit unions.  The mega banks will likely not waver from their established policies. Deposit sweeps are common for business accounts.  They are usually tied to a savings account, which is usually held within the same institution, however this is not a requirement.  The sweep can send money to any US bank if you can provide the routing number and account number.  The sweep will establish a peg balance, or floor balance, on the checking account.  At the end of the day, any amount above the peg is swept into the savings account automatically. I doubt you will find what you’re asking for within an online banking system.  You will likely have to go into a branch and speak with a personal banker.  Explain to them you want to establish a sweep on your checking account and want to send the funds to another financial institution.  You will have better luck asking for a peg of $100, or some other small amount.  They may not take your request seriously if you want to completely empty the checking account to zero. "The answers here are all correct.  This is 100% scam, beyond any reasonable doubt.  Don't fall for it.  However, I felt it valuable to explain what would happen were you to fall for this.  It's not all that hard to understand, but it involves understanding some of the time delays that exist in modern banking today. The most important thing to understand is that depositing a check does not actually put dollars in your account, even though it appears to.  A check is not legal tender for debts public and private.  It's a piece of paper known as a ""bill of exchange.""  It's an authorization for a payee (you), to request that their bank pay you the amount on the check.  A transaction made with a check does not actually draw to a close until your bank and their bank communicate and cause the actual transfer of funds to take place.  This process is called ""clearing"" the check. Despite living in the modern times, this process is slow.  It can take 7-10 days to clear a check (especially if it is an international bank).  This is not good for the banking business.  You can imagine how difficult it would be to tell a poor client, who is living paycheck to paycheck, that he can't have his pay until the check clears a week later.  Banks have an interest in hiding this annoying feature of the modern banking system, so they do.  When you deposit a check, the bank will typically advance you the money (an interest free loan, in effect) while the check ""floats"" (i.e. until it clears).  This creates the illusion that the money is actually in your account for most intents and purposes.  (presumably a bank would distinguish between the floating check and a cleared check if you tried to close out your account, but otherwise it looks and feels like the money is in your hands). Of course, if the check is dishonored (because the payer had insufficient funds, or the account simply did not exist), your bank will not get the money.  At this moment, they will cancel any advances you received and notify you that the check bounced.  Again, this happens 7-10 days later. The general pattern of this scam is that they will pay you by a method which clears slowly, like a check.  They will then ask you to withdraw the money using a faster clearing method (like a wire transfer or withdrawing the cash).  Typically they will be encouraging you to move quickly (they are on a timetable... when their check bounces, the game is up!)  At this time, it will appear as though the account has a positive balance, but in fact it has a negative balance plus an advance on the check.  This looks great until 7-10 days later, when the check bounces.  At that time, the bank will cancel the advance, and reality will set in.  You will now have an open bank account, legally opened by you in your own name, which is deeply in debt.  Meanwhile, the scammer walks away with all the money that you sent them (which cleared quickly). There are many variants which can hide the details.  Some can play games with check kiting to try to make your first check clear (then try to rope you in for a more painful hit).  Some will change the instruments they use (checks are the easy ones, so they're simply most common).  Don't try to think ""maybe this one is legit.""  These scammers literally make a living off of making shady transactions look legit. Things I would recommend looking out for:" From my reading of the wikipedia page (CRT), this only happens if you deposit or withdraw currency, not checks.  The idea behind this is that checks, ACH, etc. leave paper trails that can be tracked.  Cash doesn't, so it gets this extra level of scrutiny.  If yu get a cashiers check or a money order to pay a bill, I don't think a CRT is created.  If you withdraw $15,000 to buy a car in cash (1 stack of $100 bills), then a CRT would be generated.  It still isn't a problem, as long as you can show a bill of sale showing where the money went (or came from, if you are the seller). The IRS has a FAQ about this.  It says (taken from several spots at that page): Cash is money. It is currency and coins of the United States and any other country.  A cashier’s check, bank draft, traveler’s check, or money order with a face amount of more than $10,000 is not treated as cash and a business does not have to file Form 8300 when it receives them. These items are not defined as cash because, if they were bought with currency, the bank or other financial institution that issued them must file a Currency Transaction Report. The exception to this is if you are buying something with a resale value of more than $10k with a check, money order, etc of less than $10k. "Checks (in the US, anyway) are only good for six months after they have been written. After that. under the US Uniform Commerical Code they are considered ""stale checks"" and banks need not accept them. My experience is that they generally won't -- but you probably shouldn't count on that, either when figuring out whether to try depositing an old check or figuring out how much cash you need to keep in your checking account to cover recent stale checks. The check you now hold is certainly a statement of intent to pay you and thus is a useful document to supplement other evidence that they still owe you the money -- but since checks can be cancelled and/or a replacement check may have been issued, its value for that purpose may be limited. You can try depositing it and see what happens. If that doesn't work (or you don't want to bother trying it) you can contact the retirement plan, point out that this check went uncashed, and ask them to send you a replacement. If they haven't already done so (you might want to check your own records for that), there shouldn't be any problem with this. (Note: Many business checks have a statement printed on them that they're only good for 90 days or so. If yours does, you can skip trying to cash it; just contact the retirement plan offices.)" I wouldn't do this. There is a chance that your check could get lost/misdirected/misapplied, etc.  Then you would need to deal with the huge bureaucracy to try to get it fixed while interest and penalties pile up.   What you can do is have the IRS withdraw the money themselves by providing the rounting number and account number of your bank.  This should work whether is it a traditional brick and mortar bank or an online bank. buy a cashiers check with the cash (a CRT will be nec if over 10 K) and deposit the cashiers check The check is from your credit card company.  Whose ever the money is, it is certainly not the credit card company's, and they know that.  This is why they cut the check to you.  You should definitely cash the check (or deposit it into your bank account).   You've tried to contact the mattress store multiple times, and they aren't responding.  At some point, you've got to say that you've done everything that you could to do the right thing.   Now, keep in mind that at some point in the future, the mattress store may come back to you and ask for the money back.  If I were you, I would not spend this money for quite some time.  Put it away in a savings account (maybe add it to your emergency fund).  Then if they come back in the future looking for money, you can easily write them a check.  You probably also want to keep some documentation on what you've done already to try to give the money back to them, just in case for some reason they try to claim that you owe them some interest or something like that. "Lets say you owed me $123.00 an wanted to mail me a check. I would then take the check from my mailbox an either take it to my bank, or scan it and deposit it via their electronic interface. Prior to you mailing it you would have no idea which bank I would use, or what my account number is. In fact I could have multiple bank accounts, so I could decide which one to deposit it into depending on what I wanted to do with the money, or which bank paid the most interest, or by coin flip. Now once the check is deposited my bank would then ""stamp"" the check with their name, their routing number, the date, an my account number. Eventually an image of the canceled check would then end up back at your bank. Which they would either send to you, or make available to you via their banking website. You don't mail it to my bank. You mail it to my home, or my business, or wherever I tell you to mail it. Some business give you the address of another location, where either a 3rd party processes all their checks, or a central location  where all the money for multiple branches are processed. If you do owe a company they will generally ask that in the memo section in the lower left corner that you include your customer number. This is to make sure that if they have multiple Juans the money is accounted correctly. In all my dealings will paying bills and mailing checks I have never been asked to send a check directly to the bank. If they want you to do exactly as you describe, they should provide you with a form or other instructions."