Official Bank Check
The legal department at the Bank left me a message telling me that the bank check was paid & the recipient got the funds. Call up the bank and find out who the recipient was. Generally it can only be cashed by the person whose name is on it - the original business partner to whom it was intended. It is unlikely to be cashed by the attorney, unless he misrepresented the facts to the bank and got the funds. My question is how could he have cashed it without the original bank check? The other possibility is your mom lost this check, went to the bank and requested them to cancel this and reissue a fresh banker's check and give it to the business partner - in which case the check you had was worthless. You would need to work with the bank and ask them for details. However without the details of the original bank check that you found, it would be difficult for the bank to help you. How? Basically all banks nowadays allow online deposits from a smartphone - you take a picture from the front and back of the check, and submit it, and that's it. You still have the paper check, and it looks pristine, but it is deposited (and the paper is worthless).
"I've been wondering the same thing - I can't find any ""official"" information from the banks, but there is the following info: So, if it's all with the same bank - try it! The worst that can happen is that the bank won't credit your ISA and will refund you." I would go to the bank and just express the concern that the check sent to you might not fully clear. You don't want to spend it until you're sure it cleared. I'd ask for a manager to tell you when it will clear, then confirm after that date that it's cleared, with the same guy.  Perhaps someone in the industry can explain how long the bank has before deciding the check is bad. 10 days? 2 weeks? Really, it should either clear or bounce by the second night.  I'd not risk doing this for anyone. Anyone I know personally can cash their own check, and I'd not get involved with anyone I don't know on a financial matter like this. EDIT - See Littleadv comment below. Good checks clear fast, a forged check has time for the victim to go to the bank and challenge the signature and cashing of the check. The victim can have 60 days to do this. That's the issue, I am wrong, the bank manager couldn't confirm the check was good so soon. "This is based on my experience with Chase and may not be applicable to other banks. As you mentioned Chase as one of the banks you do business with hopefully this will be helpful to you. The money does come out of your account immediately. If the check isn't cashed in a certain amount of time, the check expires and you get the money credited back to your account. Once you have made a bill payment online you can check on the status of your check by looking at your payment activity, finding the payment in question, and following the ""proof of payment"" link.   There is will provide you with information on your payment which you can submit to your payee to prove when you submitted the payment, and which they can use to verify with the bank that you really did send the payment as you claimed.  Once the check is cashed, this page will also contain images of the front and back of the cashed check, so you can prove that the recipient really did cash it.  You can see from this info that the check is being funded from a different account number than your own, which is good for security purposes since (per Knuth, 2008) giving someone else your bank routing number and account number as found on your personal checks basically provides them with all they need to (fraudulently, of course) clean out your account." In banks and institutions where you could look at the money supply of M1 which is the physical currency in circulation compared to M2 which would be all the deposits that tend to be valued much more. http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/ would be the link where as of Nov. 2014 the figures are M1 - 2,849.8 M2 - 11,588.7 Footnotes from that: M1 consists of (1) currency outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve   Banks, and the vaults of depository institutions; (2) traveler's   checks of nonbank issuers; (3) demand deposits at commercial banks   (excluding those amounts held by depository institutions, the U.S.   government, and foreign banks and official institutions) less cash   items in the process of collection and Federal Reserve float; and (4)   other checkable deposits (OCDs), consisting of negotiable order of   withdrawal (NOW) and automatic transfer service (ATS) accounts at   depository institutions, credit union share draft accounts, and demand   deposits at thrift institutions. Seasonally adjusted M1 is constructed   by summing currency, traveler's checks, demand deposits, and OCDs,   each seasonally adjusted separately.  M2 consists of M1 plus (1)   savings deposits (including money market deposit accounts); (2)   small-denomination time deposits (time deposits in amounts of less   than $100,000), less individual retirement account (IRA) and Keogh   balances at depository institutions; and (3) balances in retail money   market mutual funds, less IRA and Keogh balances at money market   mutual funds. Seasonally adjusted M2 is constructed by summing savings   deposits, small-denomination time deposits, and retail money funds,   each seasonally adjusted separately, and adding this result to   seasonally adjusted M1. Where M1 sounds like the physical money outside the banks and M2 is the money inside the banks. Did you mean something more specific here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product would be a link about GDP in terms of economic output that has more than a few pieces to it that I'm sure whole courses in college are devoted to understanding this measurement. There is no bank that I know of offering such a feature and I'm not sure what the point of it would be (other than to annoy their customers). If you've been subjected to a fraudulent check your best bet is to either choose to write checks only to trusted parties and/or use your banks BillPay service (they usually issue checks on another account while transferring the money from your account). The drawbacks of your current plan, bounced legitimate checks and high maintenance nature, outweigh the potential benefits of catching a fraudulent check since you're not legally obligated to pay checks you haven't written. "How/when does my employer find out? Do they get a report from their   bank stating that ""check 1234 for $1212.12 paid to John Doe was never   deposited"" or does it manifest itself as an eventual accounting   discrepancy that somebody has to work to hunt down? The accounting department or the payroll company they use will report that the check was not deposited. The bank has no idea that a check was written, but the accounting deportment will know.  The bank reports on all the checks that were cashed. Accounting cares because the un-cashed check for $1212.12 is a liability. They have to keep enough money in the bank to pay all the liabilities. It shouldn't be hard for them to track down the discrepancy, they will know what checks are outstanding. Can my employer punish me for refusing the money in this way? Do they   have any means to force me to take what I am ""owed?"" They can't punish you. But at some time in the future they will will tell their bank not to honor the check. They will assume that it was lost or misplaced, and they will issue a new one to you.  When tax time comes, and I still have not accepted the money, would it   be appropriate to adjust my reported income down by the refused   amount? You can't decide not to report it. The company knows that in year X they gave you a check for the money. They are required to report it, since they also withheld money for Federal taxes, state taxes, payroll taxes, 401K, insurance. They also count your pay as a business expense.  If you try and adjust the numbers on the W-2  the IRS will note the discrepancy and want more information. Remember the IRS get a copy of every W-2.  The employer has to report it because some people who aren't organized may not have cashed a December check before the company has to generate the W-2 in late January. It would confuse everything if they could skip reporting income just because a check wasn't cashed by the time they had to generate the W-2." "There are at least a couple problems:   Your friend may not manage money well and so may not have enough money in the account.  Check bounces.  They get charged a fee.  You get charged a fee.  You have to chase after the friend to get the fee paid.  The friend was cheap about the regular fees and doesn't want to pay this much higher fee.   Your ""friend"" may really be a crook.  The check is no good.  Perhaps it's written under a false identity such that you are attempting to cash a stolen/forged check.  You cash it.  They take the money and disappear.  You get charged with participating in the crime, go to jail, and now have a criminal record (worst case).   My quick thought is that if you don't know the person well enough to know the home address, you don't know the person well enough to cash checks.   In general, I would view this the same as a loan.  When loaning to a friend, you should never loan more than you are willing to lose.  Note that an actual loan would be safer.  If you loan $50 to a friend, at worst you're out $50.  If you deposit a fraudulent check, you did something illegal.  You will have to be convincing when you tell your story to the police.  If they don't believe you, they could charge you.  A couple bad breaks and you could go to jail." Yes, but it's a matter of paper trail and lifestyle. Your $600K guy may get questioned when he makes the deposit, but would show the record of having that money elsewhere. People buy cars with cash (a check) all the time. The guy filing a tax return claiming little to no income or no return at all, is more likely to get flagged than the $100K+ earning couple who happened to be able to save to buy their $25K car every 10 years with cash.  On reading the article, the bank had its own concerns. The guy who was trying to withdraw the money was elderly, and the bank seemed pretty concerned to make sure he wasn't about to be scammed. It may not be spelled out as such, but a custodian of one's money does have an obligation to not be party to a potential scam, and the very request for such a huge sum of money in cash is a red flag.