Heh, a check in 1995 you say. Ok, hear this. This year 2 guys here in Warsaw put a bag full of newspaper into a cash deposit and walked away with 1.5 million Euro on their account. By 'their' account I mean an account set up on a fake or some bum who gave them their ID for a few hundred. Supposedly they had an insider who thought them how to build trust on the account, so after some time the deposits are cashed in before verified. The scammers vanished into thin air, in the meantime cashing out about 1 mil Euro, and the guy putting the bag on the cctv probably turned out to be some other drunkard.
I remember a much less spectacular, but related 'hack' that worked here in the Netherlands until it was patched years ago. The trick was to withdraw 125 guilders from your bank account (this was before the euro), which would be presented to you as a f25,- and f100,- note. You could carefully take the f100,- note, but let the f25,- sit in the slot. After a while the ATM would detect that the money had not been taken from the slot, and take the money back. Your bank account statement would show a withdrawal of f125,-, and then a deposit of f125,- shortly after corresponding to the money being taken back by the machine.
Of course, you couldn't do this too often before they caught on to you.
ATMs don't scan a deposited check or cash. They wait for someone in the bank to open it and determine whether it is legit, then the account is credited. But after a while your account becomes "trustworthy" and any deposits are credited to the account before it is checked.
Living in China, I can say that when you deposit, you deposit bills that go through a counter and counterfeit scanner. If any bills don't pass the test, they're separated out and given back to you. You can try to submit again if you wish. It's amazingly efficient and works well. I'm surprised we don't have similar machines in Canada from where I originally hail, especially after the currency revamps.
edit: I have no idea how depositing cheques (checks for you Americans! :D) works here though.
This is true outside the banks as well. If you make any purchase exceeding 250 USD (approximating a purchase requiring 10+ 100RMB bills), chances are the store will have one of these machines.
China is also the only country I've found myself in possession of counterfeit currency. Sigh, I guess I should just take the loss of 100 RMB but I keep thinking a little luck in a taxi could keep the system flowing...
In a nutshell: a guy had setup a corporate bank account, which at this particular bank enabled him to use a "nightly dropbox" in which you declare amount of money, then put it in a bag and put it in the dropbox. These bags are not scanned before your account is credited (I know, it's insane), so guy just withdrawed the money and dissapeared.
>"These bags are not scanned before your account is credited (I know, it's insane)"
It's not insane, it's incredibly efficient. Our whole "system" operates on trust. You can certainly find holes in the system if you so choose.
But don't kid yourself: these losses are built into the profit expectations of banks. And they'll try to catch you. If you want to be on the lam for the rest of your life for a million Euros, have fun.
I'm surprised that there wasn't some kind of rangecheck for ATM deposits. I can see that you might want to take 5-figure deposits on faith and this could realistically happen, but by the time you get to 6 figures, is an ATM really where you want the deposits to be happening?
This service is called a 'nightly drop box' or sth, I suppose it's useful f.ex. for for grocery/liquor store owners, I believe a successful branch or two can easily make 6 figures income in a day. This one was actually 7 figures (1m EUR ~~4.5m PLN), around here gas station networks have private security companies to handle the pickups and drops, and I can easily assume a 1hr ride around a few branches (gas stations handle CCs, so there's probably less physical cash while the income is bigger than a liquor) will easily make a few mil, but I don't know if the sad guys drop it nightly in bunches or secure it on their own and transport it to a bank vip area during the day.
