[PLUG-TALK] Bank fraud

[Ronald Chmara]

Money is an illusion, based on the idea that a bank will give you tender of
value, based on other people giving tender of value to them. The tender
itself has no real value, and in the US system, banks can just "invent"
money out of thin air. That's how fiat currency works.




On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at gate.kl-ic.com>wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 04:26:47PM -0800, Rich Shepard wrote:
> >   Last autumn my banker called to say that the bank's fraud department
> saw
> > two suspicious checks cashed on my business account. She then e-mailed me
> > copies of the checks and, sure enough, they were the ones mis-printed by
> the
> > company that used to print my business checks. Wrong typeface,
> mis-spelled
> > company name, 3-digit check numbers when numbers are sell into 4 digits.
> > Total amount of the two checks: $2,110.00.
>
> I had a similar experience a few years ago.  An outbound check was
> stolen out of my mailbox, and the fraudster made some atrociously
> bad fake checks out of that, but managed to pass them as payroll
> checks at the Happy Valley WalMart.  They had six digit zip codes,
> fer Chthulu's sake. :-( My bank (Wells Fargo) refused to pay them,
> Walmart threatened me with collections, the Beaverton police
> threatened them back with demands for security tapes and such,
> and when all was over I had a new account number, new checks, and
> the fraudster (a meth dealer living on St. Helens road) was left
> free, because the under-$10K amount was not worth prosecuting.
>
> But the mailbox also had another check for another business on a
> Chase account (just after the WaMu acquisition).  Chase has their
> corporate heads up their butts - in order to change the account
> number, they wanted my signature, but also the simultaneous
> in-person signatures of both my partners, one living in Palo
> Alto and the other in Orlando.  They demanded only my signature
> to close the account and transfer the money elsewhere.  Which
> I did, to Pacific Continental.  PacCon has their own problems
> (mostly a very strange idea of online security) but they are
> local (Eugene headquarters) and sound.  No home real estate
> exposure, most of their customers are dental offices(!).
>
> I think that points out the weakness with money, bitcoin, bank
> accounts, and every other form of stored value.  All banks are
> managed by crazy humans.  And at the end of the day, checks or
> dollar bills or integers assigned to accounts represent real
> assets somewhere.  When they don't, they are based entirely on
> mutually-accepted fables.  Remember that sincerity is the most
> important thing;  if you can fake that, you've got it made!
>
> As backing assets, I prefer gold, land, or capital equipment
> like somebody's dental equipment, which doesn't depreciate or
> go obsolete very fast.  Digging useless computational holes
> may cost real resources, but it doesn't create them.  One
> may as well dig physical holes, mark them with GPS location
> beacons, and claim them as assets.  Bitcoin is a clever hack,
> but history is littered with clever and silly hacks, see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation
>
> Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.  People are nuts.
>
> Keith
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
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