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Message:: [QUOTE="afantiques, post: 2218414, member: 71234"]So much fraud involving checks these days In reality, check fraud is down to record low levels now, mainly due to almost total extinction of checks with online card fraud taking its place and plastic taking the place of the checkbook. There may be some old boy in Coyote Sweat, Arizona still kiting rubber checks, but I doubt if you'll find an established Canadian shop doing it. Check fraud was always uncommon, but the sheer number of payments had cases popping up often enough for people to notice or have heard of someone with a bad check. The fragmented nature of the US banking system did not help, of course. In my ebay days I took thousands of US checks, and about 1 in 500 would have a problem. Usually Insufficient Funds, almost always due to carelessness, almost always made good with apologies. I never, ever waited for a check to clear.  Because the statistics were on my side. The only deliberate case of a bad check in about half a million dollars worth of payments was for a few hundred dollars, the scamp went to a few months in a Federal pen, and I still get the occasional 'reparation' payment, usually to small to be worth banking. The nett cost of a totally liberal policy toward checks (I even stated on my listings that I did not wait to clear checks) was a cost of a small fraction of one percent of turnover, something that was truly affordable.[/QUOTE]