Has anyone had any experience with a bounced check?

[tkkmasky]

My dh was owed money ($400) from his ex-landlord in NYC.....when my dh gave up his room, his landlord promised to send his security deposit by mail.

Well, after a couple of months, he finally did, by personal check.....and wouldn't you know, our credit union informed us today that there were insufficient funds in this jerk's account and that they had to re-submit the check....

so now what? I don't have too much faith that there will be sufficient funds in his account within the next few business days. Isn't bouncing a check illegal? What do we do now? (We live in Michigan, this guy lives in NYC, and when we tried to call him, we found that his phone had been disconnected!) Will the bank go after him, or do we have to?

all in all, this whole situation stinks.

[billsmrs]

You poor thing! That is ALOT of money to lose. You need to prosecute him!

Being a business owner I have had the unfortunate chance to have been the recipient of a based check......only to find out that the account had actually been closed several weeks prior!!

Here is what you need to do.........call the bank from which he wrote the check from and verify the account is still valid....tell them he wrote you a check for $400 and you want to make sure the funds are there. If you run it back through you will incur more fees so I would skip that until you call the bank. If you call and they say the acct was closed then call the county attorney in NYC and see what you need to do to get them to get your money. That is who I had to contact here. It doesn't cost you anything and with an amount over $100 (I think) they can serve some time behind bars. The county attorney will try and locate the person and give them adequate time to pay you. If they don't then at that point they prosecute.

Please follow--up on this and don't let this guy get away with this. Chances are if he has done it to you all he has done it to others.

Almost forgot......any information you have on this person such as phone, address, employer, family members addresses, etc will be helpful to the county attorney. If you have a drivers license # that is even better.

Good luck and let me know how it goes!

[3tbear]

I wish I had an answer for you. Could you talk to a lawyer about this, maybe they could help you? How about a collection agency, an even better idea. Do you have any collection agencies in your area?

My first husband used to work for a carpentry firm. One day he went to the bank to cash his payroll check, no money in the account. That's horrible when the man is the only one working in the family and there is no money that week. It happened to other workers as well. He quit that company soon afterwards.
He never went after the company, we just didn't have the funds to pursue it further.

Good luck to you!

[tkkmasky]

thank you billsmrs......I will have to wait until Monday but I will do as you suggested.

[tkkmasky]

UPDATE!!!

and a huge thank you to billsmrs...........

Well, after MONTHS of frustration, which included this jerk changing his phone numbers on both his home phone AND cell phone so we couldn't call him anymore and blocking us on his email so we couldn't email him (which I did anyway from my millions of email addresses, LOL).....we received a money order a few days ago in the full amount of $400.00 plus $20 to cover long distance phone calls and a 5.00 bounced check fee!!

I had contacted the New York state Attorney General and filled out the forms required. Within 3 weeks I got a letter from them stating they were going after this guy and then I got a desperate email (after months of ignoring us) from the jerk landlord saying he was overnighting a money order + $20. Ha ha. It also cost him $15 to overnight the thing. So all told he ended up paying $35 more than if he had just given us the deposit in the first place.

I'm so happy to finally get this! It was a long fight but I was determined not to give up (which is what this guy wanted me to do) and now I'm $420 richer. Yippiee!!

[mayfly]

I am so happy for you! That is wonderful!

3tbear, that is such a sad story

[cutie_pie]

I am happy things worked out for you. Standing up to people like that can pay off

3tbear---that is terrible what you had to go through! It is bad enough having a security deposit refund bounce, but when it is a pay check that you are counting on--that is just terrible, I know we would be in trouble if my dh went without a paycheck.

[freesurfer]

Glad it's over for ya finally!!!

[tlspiegel]

That is good news.