The problem with willful bank fraud is not that we still use paper checks.
At Axios, Felix Salmon has looked into the TikTok check-fraud craze, and discovered that “the real problem” is that . . . we still use checks.
It is not.
Salmon writes:
Why it matters: The paper check has declined in popularity to the point at which it is no longer broadly understood. That can prove dangerous.
Driving the news: The whims of the TikTok algorithm alighted disastrously upon Chase last week, as videos went viral of people writing large checks to themselves, depositing the nonexistent money into their accounts, and then withdrawing enormous amounts of cash.
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This, of course, is check fraud — but the people who thought they discovered an “ATM glitch” can probably be forgiven for not even really understanding what checks are, let alone what check fraud is.
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Most of them have probably never written a check in their lives.
No, the people who did this cannot “probably be forgiven” — for anything. Pace Salmon, it doesn’t matter whether the people who engaged in this behavior understood the ins and outs of checks, or of ATMs, or of any other aspect of banking, and it doesn’t matter whether or not those people had enjoyed sufficient “financial literacy education.” This wasn’t an example of bad decision-making as the result of a lack of information, or of incomprehensible complexity screwing over otherwise decent people; it was a brazen attempt to steal money that the thieves knew full well was not theirs. This was larceny. It was deliberate, conscious, willful larceny. That most of the people who engaged in it “have probably never written a check in their lives” does nothing to alter that. As the videos on TikTok clearly show, the culprits were perfectly aware that they didn’t have the money that they were taking out, and they had no intention of trying to remedy that. The plan here was not to temporarily borrow against assets held elsewhere; it was to generate “enormous amounts of cash” that was not theirs, had never been theirs, and would never be theirs. It was criminal.
Ultimately, Salmon’s argument could be advanced in justification of any fraudulent behavior. On a technical level, I don’t know much about how the wire transfer system works. This does not mean that it would be understandable, or forgivable, or the fault of the wire-transfer system for existing in the first instance, if I learned that, by manipulating it in some way or another, I could get my hands on a huge sum of money to which I had no rightful claim. It would not. I would be a felon, and I’d deserve what came my way.
Frankly, even the most charitable excuse does nothing to let the perpetrators off the hook here. Salmon writes that they “thought they discovered an ‘ATM glitch.'” Okay? A glitch that did what? Played a tune? Gave a massage? Showed Monday Night Football? Give me a break. The “glitch” didn’t involve the screen showing a branded, one-time-only promotion: Take Out $10 and We’ll Give You $40,000. Hurry, While Stocks Last!; it involved a bunch of criminals discovering that the system was less defensive against fraud that it should have been. Certainly, that is bad for Chase. Criminals exist, and it’s the job of any bank to prevent them getting their way. But that’s no more an excuse for criminality than it’s an excuse for car theft to note that an unlocked car with the keys in the ignition is easier to steal than a locked one. There is no such thing as an “ATM glitch” that results in the legitimate transfer of money to the user. I know that. You know that. The TikTok brigade knows that, too.
As is Axios‘s wont, Salmon’s post finishes with two takeaways. The first:
The big picture: For all that some folks are blaming the Chase fiasco on a lack of financial literacy education, the fact is that teaching kids about what checks are and how to balance a checkbook, let alone what check fraud is, is an exercise in futile anachronism.
This sentence starts well, but it concludes absolutely ludicrously. It should read:
For all that some folks are blaming the Chase fiasco on a lack of financial literacy education, the fact is that stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the bank is as morally wrong if it’s achieved at an ATM as it would be if it were achieved by pointing a gun at the teller.
And then, of course, we get “the bottom line”:
The bottom line: Americans are still wedded to paper checks in a way that befuddles citizens of other rich countries. Sadly, that means checks won’t be going away any time soon — and consumers will continue to bounce checks without intending to.
Good grief. “Without intending to”? Without intending to? What can that possibly mean? The story here was that someone on TikTok noticed that if you wrote a check for money you knew did not have, you could take gobs of someone else’s cash out of the wall. If that’s not intentional check fraud, I have no idea what is.