Stolen Cheque Recovery

Prefade

OK, so here is the basic story. When moving house in 2004 I omitted to tell the registrars of a company I owned shares in about my change of address. Consequently I stopped receiving the quarterly divided cheques they were sending me.

Last summer I realised the error and sent them my new details. Checking my account summary, sure enough they listed two years of unpresented cheques save for one from April 2005 which was showing up as presented. It was only £32 so we are not talking huge sums here.

I wrote to them and asked them to investigate. After confirming that the cheque had indeed been presented, they have duly obtained from their bank a copy of the cheque and the associated clearing receipt. This shows that it was paid in to an account held at a branch of HSBC not far from both my old and new addresses. It is an account that has never been operated by me.

So the question is how to proceed from here. Obviously I will write back to the registrars and tell them that the cheque has been presented fraudulently, but should I also be contacting HSBC to inform them that I have reason to believe that the account has been used by someone presenting a stolen cheque made out in my name.

This was the only cheque that was used in this way, all the others sent to the same address since remained unpresented and have since been cancelled. I therefore suspect this was a one-off rather than a long standing fraud. I'm more curious than anything else as to how this happened. After spending 18 months trying to persuade a bank to accept my foreign wife as a customer I'm fascinated to discover how the bank managed to let someone open an account in my name with a stolen cheque for £32.

Mikeyorks

Prefade wrote:

I'm fascinated to discover how the bank managed to let someone open an account in my name with a stolen cheque for £32.

I doubt they did .. it's an awful lot of work for £32. Suspect they've somehow managed to pay it into an existing account .... which is equally a lot of risk for £32. But they'll just have planned to say 'oops, mistake' if discovered?

Write to the Registrar and HSBC (copying the docs to the latter). But you may need a crime number to force the pace .. and you'll need to decide if it's worth it. But, nevertheless, HSBC should put it to their fraud people - and they may uncover other oddities in that account? Not that they will tell you, I'm afraid