To your second point, my anecdotal experience has shown that once a check makes it past the receiving bank clerk into the electronic clearing system, all manner

To your second point, my anecdotal experience has shown that once a check makes it past the receiving bank clerk into the electronic clearing system, all manner of errors are allowed. E.g. dates in future, wrong payee, garbage signatures. The simplest way to pass a check with an error is to deposit it with 9 other "good" checks. Has anyone had a check bounce due to a bad signature?