Fair points, but not directly on the issue raised by the complaint. Its not about the legitimacy of the sending money off transaction, or about the funds avail

Fair points, but not directly on the issue raised by the complaint. Its not about the legitimacy of the sending money off transaction, or about the funds availability policy. What the victim was complaining about---and what I was agreeing with---is the bank's failure to have any mechanism to communicate when a check actually cleared. Fixing that wouldn't require a change to the funds availability policy, and wouldn't require it to dishonor any transactions. As the original complaint indicated, it would literally just be a UI tweak: the online banking system could highlight provisionally available funds differently from really really available funds, and in that way communicate to customers what is actually cleared and safe to spend. This isn't a big ask. In addition to protecting account holders from a massive range of fake check scams, that would also protect them from a bunch of other crooked stuff. For example: did you know an employer can reverse a direct deposit of a paycheck for some amount of time after it seems to go through?[1] Employees get screwed all the time when their employer randomly decides "oops, we paid you too much" after the money is already spent. Which is insane and unfair but---we wouldn't even have to change the system to protect many employees. Just have banks clearly indicate which direct deposits are final and which might still go poof if the employer unilaterally decides. [1] old example https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/23/business/turning-direct-deposits-into-direct-withdrawals.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/23/business/turning-direct-d... --- but I know people to whom this has happened this year.