A company director paid a parking fine by cheque; he posted the letter personally, as usual. A much larger amount was debited to the company bank account, and when he queried it with the bank it transpired that both the payee and the amount were skilfully changed. The director is, of course, anxious to get the money back.
What can be done? The police, of course, won’t want to know. It should be possible to trace the thief if we could get his bank account details from the bank (so far they volunteered only a photocopy of the cheque in question), followed by obtaining his address from his bank; nowadays banks check customers’ identity very carefully. Please advise ... many thanks!
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You are very cynical about the police. You may be right to be so. They have powers to get information e.g. from banks that are not available to the general public. Also even if you identify the culprit you will realistically not be able bring him to justice without the help of the police. So report the crime to the police without further delay. When the police apprehend the culprit your client will be able to commence a civil claim to get his money back.
Of course a bit of self-help will do no harm. You don't seem to be getting too much help from your client's bank. Perhaps it's time to bang the table and ask what the bank's anti-fraud team are doing about it.
If you are an accountant and are dealing with the company director in a professional capacity you will obviously have to make a MLR report in any event.
Slightly lateral but
do you know that there is an agreement between the Police and the credit card companies that the latter deal with and collate credit card fraud and the Police only get involved if the companies make them aware of organised crime?
A friend had his card used in an on line fraud and found out the address to which the goods were sent. Even so the Police didn't want to know!