Sunterra...cheque kiting like there's no tomorrow...and got caught

[Titan2]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I'm 46. I think the only thing I've ever paid for by cheque in my entire life was my university tuition over 25 years ago. Certainly in all my time as a working adult (2002-present) I have never once paid for anything by cheque.

I don't even use cash anymore, for that matter. All my day-to-day purchases are paid by credit card (for the rewards points) or at worst debit if the establishment doesn't accept credit card payments. Larger one-off expenses (for example professional legal and accounting services) I pay via e-transfer. At the very high end of my purchases (down payment on the two homes I've bought in my life), I paid by bank draft.

I really can't think of any reason why anyone would need to use a personal cheque in 2026. Businesses/corporations sure, but individuals? Why?

Do you people not have kids? I have written millions of cheques for school, dance, sports, uniforms, on and on. I find it crazy anyone older than 30 has not written a cheque. Does the wife do all of it?

[fotze2]

My buddy had a cheque he had to cash so was gonna go to the bank. I said you can just take a pic on the app. He was blown away by it.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Titan2

Do you people not have kids? I have written millions of cheques for school, dance, sports, uniforms, on and on. I find it crazy anyone older than 30 has not written a cheque. Does the wife do all of it?

I don't have children.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Titan2

Do you people not have kids? I have written millions of cheques for school, dance, sports, uniforms, on and on. I find it crazy anyone older than 30 has not written a cheque. Does the wife do all of it?

I'm 39 and while I've written cheques I don't think we've written a cheque for anything kid related (kids are 10/12). All their school field trips/sports leagues etc all take online payment. Even the 1-person-business guitar teacher we have gets e-transfer.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by woob

Really?? Not even for rent back in the day? Post-dated rent cheques?

no

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Titan2

Do you people not have kids? I have written millions of cheques for school, dance, sports, uniforms, on and on. I find it crazy anyone older than 30 has not written a cheque. Does the wife do all of it?

Why have a dog and bark yourself.

[Shazam]

Man I hope they had cheque kiting insurance.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Locke

Man...how young are you guys that you've never written cheques? I've written tons of them! I've written a couple just this week.

I will say though...'Cool Story Bro' time...when I first started my business I had to build an office from scratch, that involved a lot of trades, large purchases, etc. Things that you cant always pay debit for.

So I go and get all of these things, like desks, flooring, trades, etc. and I write them all cheques. All over the city!

I didnt sign a single goddamned one of them.

Totally whiffed it. I dont know WTF happened, if I just had too many things going through my mind and my focus was everywhere, but I didnt sign a single cheque.

So I spent an entire day driving all over the goddamned City re-issuing or signing cheques...

"I sometimes drop off my rent cheque having forgotten to sign it"

(I couldn't find a GIF of this, unfortunately but that's your boy George Costanza)

[Shazam]

In the before times of ten years ago, most banks didn't give two ####s what was written on the cheque. My accountant's office got broken into (by the people doing the asphalt roof, no less. Oh yeah they screwed that up and the office flooded a few months later) and they stole her chequebook. They then went hog wild and drained her business account, which had something like $43K in it. And the bank dispersed the funds. Good job TD. God it was such a cluster####. She got all the money back and the guy was arrested (he deposited the cheques at ATMs), and somebody at the bank admitted that cheques really aren't looked at very carefully.

[Titan2]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I'm 39 and while I've written cheques I don't think we've written a cheque for anything kid related (kids are 10/12). All their school field trips/sports leagues etc all take online payment. Even the 1-person-business guitar teacher we have gets e-transfer.

My kids are 20 and 24. I used to run a softball league and tried to find a way to do it online. It only came in at the end of my time there.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Titan2

Do you people not have kids? I have written millions of cheques for school, dance, sports, uniforms, on and on. I find it crazy anyone older than 30 has not written a cheque. Does the wife do all of it?

All kinds of cheques written for kids sports over the years and I don't think any of them were ever cashed. Which was annoying as we had to keep ordering them from the bank. Mostly written for all the various deposits that were required over the course of a season and the cheque was returned at the end if you met your commitment.

In my early days almost everything was by cheque it seemed. Rent, bill payments etc. ATM's were still in their infancy so getting cash was a major hassle.

[troutman]

Mom used to use cheques to buy groceries in the 70s.

[flames_fan_down_under]

I did not grow up well off whatsoever m, but had friends in high school whose parents had money, I remember their moms all bought orange juice from Sunterra. Damn was it tasty. Went back home to my OJ from concentrate. To this day Sunterra stands as this beacon of wealth and privilege to me.

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by troutman

Mom used to use cheques to buy groceries in the 70s.

Even in the 80s. Every checkout had a little raised platform to write the cheque on.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by ken0042

That article talks about the most fraudulent form of cheque kiting. I know back in the 90s I would often go grocery shopping the day before payday; and write a cheque even though I didn't have any money in my account yet. Co-op used to also allow you to do "cash back"- so you could write the cheque for an extra $40 and get the cash.

What Sunterra was caught doing was worse, they were writing cheques to cover another bad cheque, etc. And I would think most of us have not done that.

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by fotze2

Why does everyone know what kiting is but me?

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I had to google it too. Sounds like it's just finance guys that know what it is, and have done it.

I googled it and still have no idea wtf it is

[I-Hate-Hulse]

I made a reference to "balancing your chequebook" at work the other day. No one without grey hairs got it.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

I made a reference to "balancing your chequebook" at work the other day. No one without grey hairs got it.

People don't even know what a budget is anymore, nevermind balancing it. Or a chequebook either.

[bob-loblaw]

Just before Christmas I deposited a bunch of cheques through a banking app. I got errors saying the amounts entered don't match the cheque amounts for every single one except for the last cheque. On that one I didn’t get any errors, but of course the amounts were wrong. FML. I tapped a 3 instead of 6 and it was deposited for $300 less.
I immediately emailed the bank and told them the mistake. Their reply was basically nothing can be done, it's too late, contact your customer to let them know.
I was basically on holidays already, so it took me until about January 10th to tell the customer about the mistake. I apologized and asked them to cover the difference when they have a chance.
Last Friday I got an email from our bank telling me that the mobile deposit was rejected by another financial institution due to an incorrect deposit amount, so they debited our account for the entire amount. Say what??? The customer never did reply to me, so I assume that they put a stop payment on the cheque so itwas withdrawn. Or did their bank do something else? This was done five weeks after it was deposited so I don't understand how that is allowed to happen. The amount deposited was smaller than the cheque amount, but I suppose that makes no difference.
As an aside, I did find out that all cheques through theor app are verified by a human.

For the Sunterra kiting, that is an obscene amount of transactions and dollars to process. I’d like to know how much manpower it took to make and track the payments. It's practically an internal Ponzi scheme.

[Manhattanboy]

Originally Posted by troutman

Mom used to use cheques to buy groceries in the 70s.

Mom used to cash cheques at Safeway in the 70s.