{"id":669218,"date":"2010-02-18T20:14:20","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T01:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10002317"},"modified":"2010-02-18T20:14:47","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T01:14:47","slug":"its-probably-a-bad-idea-to-cash-a-check-for-a-stranger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/669218","title":{"rendered":"It’s Probably A Bad Idea To Cash A Check For A Stranger"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I bet if some guy approaches you on the street right as you’re about to walk into your bank or credit union and asks you to cash a check for him, you’d say no. That’s a good idea. Apparently at least two people in Madison, Wisconsin thought they were doing a good deed and helped the man out. It turns out that the checks were drawn on a closed bank account in Atlantic City, NJ.<\/p>\n

Here’s the police incident report from cityofmadison.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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He started out thinking he had done a good deed, but as a few hours passed the gut feeling that he had gotten involved in something suspicious grew – to the point where the 21-year old downtown resident knew he had to call police.<\/p>\n

He explained it was around 2:30 in the afternoon, Monday, February 8th, when he encountered a man outside of the UW Credit Union on State Street. The man was in a bind said he was from out of town, and needed to cash a check, which he could not do because he was not a member of the UW Credit Union. He offered the passerby $10 if he would go in and cash the $480 personal check. <\/p>\n

The young man said he did not want any money, but was willing to do this as a favor. So, he went in, signed his name on the check, and gave the cash to the man outside. <\/p>\n

Madison Police, working with a UW Credit Union Fraud investigator, and a Bank of America Corporate Security investigator, determined there were actually two $480 dollar checks cashed at the credit union that day: one by the man who contacted police, another by a second – likely unsuspecting – individual. Both checks were linked to a bank account out of Atlantic City, New Jersey. The account was closed on January 22, 2010 for being overdrawn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Police incident report<\/a> [City of Madison] (Thanks to A!)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bet if some guy approaches you on the street right as you’re about to walk into your bank or credit union and asks you to cash a check for him, you’d say no. That’s a good idea. Apparently at least two people in Madison, Wisconsin thought they were doing a good deed and helped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2759,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2O5Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2759"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}