Fraud case against family

[Phil1010]

Hi All, I am in a situation where I suspect someone of defrauding my uncle. I believe they somehow got him to sign a blank cheque, it was a substantial amount that was debited from his account. Unfortunately due to the on set of dementia he has no recollection. He has been a resident at a care home for the last 15 years. This has only come to light as we are in the process of clearing all his old documents. The cheque amount was debited 10 years ago. We have already gone to the bank, but they have said they can not help as they only keep images of cheques for seven years. They also could not help with tracing which account the funds were credited to (which account the cheque was paid into). What are my options? Would the police be able to help? Would a solicitor be able to access more information?

Hope someone can help

[jaguarsuk]

Hi All, I am in a situation where I suspect someone of defrauding my uncle. I believe they somehow got him to sign a blank cheque, it was a substantial amount that was debited from his account. Unfortunately due to the on set of dementia he has no recollection. He has been a resident at a care home for the last 15 years. This has only come to light as we are in the process of clearing all his old documents. The cheque amount was debited 10 years ago. We have already gone to the bank, but they have said they can not help as they only keep images of cheques for seven years. They also could not help with tracing which account the funds were credited to (which account the cheque was paid into). What are my options? Would the police be able to help? Would a solicitor be able to access more information?

Hope someone can help

Its not that the bank don't want to help and potentially actually that they can't.

My first job was in a bank and what they are telling you about the images is true. They do have copies of your uncle's statement probably on microfiche, but all it will say on the statement is type of transaction (cheque), the cheque number and the amount. All of which you already know.

The reason they need the cheque image is that when one is lodged by a payee the processing centre of their bank prints (usually on the reverse) on the cheque the bank account details, the details of the account the payee is paying the cheque into and then the cheque is sent to the payers (your uncles) bank for them to release the money.

The paying bank until around 8 years ago would keep the cheque and then after that point keep an image of the cheque for 6 years usually, so your uncles are doing more than required and if any queries arose about the payment in the old days they'd fax a copy of the cheque to be able to be sent to the customer or now they just search it on the account to download the image.

With no image it could have gone in any bank and any of their accounts, so it's impossible to identify where the money went and to who!

Now I'd check with the bank about when they went over to digital storage as opposed to physical because if they were digital when the cheque was paid there's no reason to have deleted a small image file and even if they did their IT must have a backup from not long after it was paid to recover it. In this instance the Police investigating a fraud might be able to obtain a copy image of the cheque as the bank won't go to that effort just at your request.

If it was when they were in physical store still you've no chance and that cheque burned a long time ago.