Posted originally on Sep 5, 2024 By Hannah Jackson 

Over the weekend, people have taken over a trend that had been going viral over writing fake checks to themselves and depositing it into their accounts by going to the ATM and taking out the allotted amount written on the checks. The check amounts would be for an obscene amount and the people would just keep withdrawing until the check would bounce. It started with a group of people making a video telling everyone to make a check out to themselves and go to the ATM and keep withdrawing and they would come up with thousands of dollars- a lot of people caught on to this and followed their lead.  The ones who followed this scheme shared videos of themselves actively going and doing this crime, proving to others that they should do it, too. Well.. they surely did out themselves for jail time.

This glitch is something that the bank programmer probably never anticipated. Normally, if someone were to write out a check to someone knowing that the check would bounce due to the amount of time it takes for a bank to catch it, which is usually 5-7 days since it must clear between two banks. Normally you would not withdraw that money until it clears. But going the route of just writing yourself the check within the same bank- that is something that a programmer just probably didn’t see coming since it does not need to clear from an outside bank. What people are failing to realize is this is downright bank fraud. This isn’t some “glitch” in a video game. How does one think they can go to the bank and deposit a fake check and come out with thousands of dollars? If you look up the term ‘bank fraud’ it specifically says it is the use of potentially illegal means to obtain money, assets, or other property owned or held by a financial institution. It blows my mind that people would believe that a bank would just give away “free” money without any repercussions. These people will be looking at jail time along with fines- not even including the money that they will have to pay back to these banks that they have stolen. Chase had fixed this problem within a few days of the discovery. A spokesperson from Chase said “We are aware of this incident, and it has been addressed. Regardless of what you see online, depositing a fraudulent check and withdrawing the funds from your account is fraud, plain and simple.”

Do people really believe the hype? Are they that gullible to think that they will get money for free from a bank? Money that they had to write a fake check in order to gain access to that money? It seems that people are just following the lines of trends without thinking of any backlashes or repercussions.