Fraud checking of a cheque

Fedupwithscrimping

Tried today to access funds from a cheque paid into Santander last Saturday - not there - went into bank and I was told it would be available tomorrow or Monday (despite being told at another branch that it would be today). I saw my husband and told him and he wasn't satisfied with this so he went into the branch. He spoken to Head office at Liverpool and they said that the funds wouldn't be available until next Wednesday!:eek: They said that a random fraud exercise was being done on our cheque - apparently they get done from time to time. We have since found out that the funds have been taken out of the account of the person who gave us the cheque last Wednesday - where are they? Their bank said that they had never heard of this sort of check for fraud and if any checks were done they would be done at the time of transfer. What's going on? Has anyone else ever heard of this?

Fedupwithscrimping

Update on this - my husband went back into the bank and finally found out that banks actually take 10 days to process a cheque but usually agree to do it in 5 days. Now and again they do an extended clearance on a random cheque to give time for the person giving the cheque to stop the money if they so wish. It seems that the people in the bank didn't know about this until today - strange?

premierfella

The 2-4-6 cheque cycle applies. All that has happened in your case with this "random fraud cheque"* is that the cycle has become 2-6-6.

Day 0 was Monday (this is confirmed by the fact that the cheque debited the account of the other person on Day 2 (Wednesday)), day 4 is today (hence some of the advice you were given) and day 6 is next Tuesday (but Santander may not clear it for withdrawal until end of day Tuesday, hence the advice of next Wednesday).

http://www.santander.co.uk/csgs/StaticBS?blobcol=urldata&blobheader=application/pdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1223403963009&cachecontrol=immediate&ssbinary=true&maxage=3600

* I doubt it is particularly random, there will be SOMETHING about the cheque or the account it is paid into that has triggered it - but it is highly likely to be something mundane like the cheque being high value or significantly out of line with the normal deposits to the account.

Justicia

That's an excellent clear response there, premierfella. Am not the OP, but was interesting reading.