Are you sure USBC screwed up?  I'm never surprised at how inept the postal service is. 

If it was a postal service screw-up, wouldn't the correct address still be on the envelope? Then the person receiving the wrong letter would just write "wrong address" on the front of it and the USPS could try it again.

I am sure the person who forwarded them was nice...but it's not like he had a choice. Most banks, and I haven't seen one that doesn't do this in a very very long time, require ID to cash a check. So unless they had false ID's made up to each name on the checks....

Also, most banks won't cash a check unless you have an account with them, just in case the check bounces, it comes out of your account. So unless they knew what bank everyone uses, again the checks aren't use.

And I certainly think that any bank would throw up a red flag over someone trying to deposit a check into their account with someone else's name on it. So all they really could do was throw them out, send them back to the USBC, or send them to you. It was very nice of the person to choose option 3 which gets you the money the quickest.

Quote from: dR3w on August 22, 2014, 02:50:05 PM

He forwarded it to me after taking the checks out of the original envelope and putting it into a business envelope.  So I never saw the original envelope.  There was over $3,000 in payout in the envelope.  Definitely tempting to those with a broken moral compass.

Quote from: milorafferty on August 22, 2014, 02:41:50 PM

If it was a postal service screw-up, wouldn't the correct address still be on the envelope? Then the person receiving the wrong letter would just write "wrong address" on the front of it and the USPS could try it again.

Quote from: milorafferty on August 22, 2014, 03:52:33 PM

Actually, I can deposit a check just by taking a picture of it with my phone. I know this works for the USBC Open checks because I deposited Steven's    mine in my checking account this week.  It would be easy enough to commit fraud this way.

Yes, the new apps allow this type of deposit. But do you think if you did that with a check with my name on it, that money would stay in your account long? I would hope someone at the bank takes that picture and uses it to match it to the name on one's account and would pick up the difference. I would assume when depositing money this way, there is a hold on that amount for a few days, similar to depositing a check in an ATM. The money may show in your account immediately, but it isn't there to actually use/spend/withdraw until the deposit is verified (in the ATM scenario, the envelope gets to the bank and the check is verified as real, and clears. In the picture scenario, I am sure the bank clears the check electronically to make sure it is valid). So unless the bank makes a mistake and allows those funds to be used, in which case they just call the police on you, the money would be removed from the account once it is realized that the name on the check isn't the account holders.