RBC customer's cheque was cashed ... not just once, but Twice ! | Page 2 | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

RetirEd said
Let's keep in mind that, despite saying a statement would "be considered correct" after 30 days (whatever that means), the banks assert their own ability to make changes for an arbitrarily long time afterward.

Frankly, I have always thought that mobile cheque deposit without follow-up depositing the physical cheque was an inexcusably stupid idea. At first, they DID require that, as I recall.

There's no way I would ever destroy my physical record of a transaction, including my duplicate-cheque chequebook. That alone would stop me from ever using mobile deposit. (Not to mention my refusal to do any online banking.)  

Avoiding use of mobile deposits would do nothing to reduce your risk of falling foul to the incident described by the OP. Would just make you walk to the bank for no good reason.

You could protect yourself very effectively and without any detrimental effort by not using cheques (unless its to yourself). But that would mean having to use Interac etransfer and other online banking functions.

And checking transactions takes 5 seconds with a banking app. You could also get automatic notifications for each transaction.

In this particular case using online banking mitigates your risk and “traditional banking” creates the risk in the first place. Mobile cheque deposit capability isn’t the problem. Cheques could always be copied, or falsified and its rather easy to do.

All my bank accounts have alerts (email and SMS text) to advise me whenever a withdrawal above $X* has been made and I know what withdrawals to expect at various times each month. Anything unexpected would get my attention to go into my account online and investigate. There is no reason to miss a nefarious withdrawal.

* Set it as low as one likes such as $15, or maybe $92 to mitigate number of alerts. Do the same for one's credit cards.

smayer97 said
"...you usually have 30 days after the date..."

People need to learn how to interpret the language. First, this is NOT law... Second, this is a guideline, as the emphasized word points out. Even "...this could differ from one bank to another." is about policy, not law.

The law allows up to 2 years before the statute of limitations applies.  

It is not a guideline. The limit is part of the account agreement. The exact time period does vary from bank to bank.

The RBC Royal Bank Personal Account Agreement allows 45 days after the end of the account's monthly cycle to report errors, like a duplicated cheque:

15. Account Verification and Security of Your Account
We are not responsible for monitoring your account on your behalf. It is your responsibility to regularly examine all Account transaction information in your Statements or other transaction records, including but not limited to Digital Banking records, ATM statements or any other transaction confirmations. You must notify us in writing of any errors, irregularities, omissions, unauthorized transactions, or forgeries related to or in the Account transaction information within 45 days of the last calendar date of your Monthly Cycle. If you do not notify us as required, you are deemed to have knowledge of and agreed to the Account transaction information, fees, and Instruments posted to your Account, and account balances, and will have accepted the Account transaction information and Statements as complete, correct and binding on you, and we will be released from all claims by you in respect of the Account transaction information and Statements or other transaction records, including any transaction and balance errors, and including any claim for negligence, conversion, breach of trust, breach of fiduciary duty or breach of contract.

The statute of limitations is moot afterwards. It just requires one to file the losing lawsuit against the bank in court within two years.

Alexandre said

In a rare case when I have to deposit an actual cheque, and I always use app for that, I am getting email from my FI outlining how long should I keep original cheque. I think it is 30 days. I just put cheque aside for that period.
My FI also sends reminder email after that period, telling me it is now OK to dispose cheque. This is when cheque goes to shredder.

The retention time can vary from bank to bank. Payments Canada Rule A10 (Imaging Rule), section 16 requires the original cheque to be destroyed no later than 120 days after the cheque is imaged.

Bank of Montreal requires personal banking clients destroy the mobile deposited cheque after 14 days:

What should I do with the cheque after I’ve deposited it?
Write the date and "Deposited" on the front of the cheque. Keep it for 14 days to ensure it clears, then destroy the cheque promptly after the 14-day period and no later than 120 calendar days after the deposit date.

Simplii Financial requires destruction after five days:

Mobile Deposit Service
…
Destruction and replacement of transmitted items

You agree to retain the item for at least 5 calendar days from the date of deposit and destroy it within 120 calendar days of deposit by shredding, pulping, burning, crushing, erasing or any other means that ensures that the item cannot be reused.

Alexandre said
If someone cashes my cheque twice I am of a strong opinion that responsibility to prevent this lays on FI and FI only.
Never happened to me, but if it does - I'll contact my FI from which account cheque was drawn, notify them someone tried to deposit it second time and expect them to undo the transaction.

It is a shared responsibility.

The drawee bank will catch the second deposit attempt if a cheque is deposited again shortly after the first deposit. But, the bank will not compare each cheque against all the cheques previously cleared against the account for the past seven years.

This is also not a new problem. CBC Go Public story When banks cash your same cheque twice, you may be on the hook to pay is from April 2018.

Banks have 90 days after receiving a duplicate-deposited cheque to bounce it back. Account holders who let their bank know within the 30 days, 45 days, or 60 days allowed by their account agreement are not going to be out any money.

I balance my statements with my own spreadsheets, duplicates and slips monthly, but also update things every two or three days, verifying by touch-tone banking.

Cheque images are not needed to detect double presentment of cheques. Cancelled cheques or their images were not always free. I've never paid extra for either.

Chequing account statements show the cheque number and amount. That's enough to verify with entries in a cheque register, either a paper one or a software one, like in Quicken. As they appear on the statements, the cheques are marked as cleared in the register.

That will detect multiple presentments of cheques, even years later, as well as any tampering with the amount of the cheque.

Challenge is that some people don't keep track of the cheques they write and whether or not each cheque has cleared yet. Without doing that, one can't be sure a cheque showing up is legitmate or not. Based on the December date the cheque cleared, the victim in the CBC story initially thought that $150 cheque was to the snow removal company!

The story also raises an odd detail. The cheque was presented initially in July 2022 and again in December 2023. The cheque would have been over 17 months old when presented the second time in December 2023. Why wasn't the cheque rejected by the second mobile deposit attempt?

Simplii's account agreement, for example, prohibits the mobile deposit of stale-dated items:

Eligible items

• You may image and deposit any of these original Canadian currency paper items issued by a financial institution located in Canada: cheques, bank money orders, bank drafts, convenience cheques and certified cheques.

• You agree you will not image and deposit any of the following:
…

• Items which are postdated or dated more than 6 months prior to the date of deposit.

EQ Bank's account agreement also disallows stale-dated cheques, both by mail and mobile deposit:

4. Cheque Parameters and Eligible Items

You agree to the following whenever you deposit a cheque:

• Only paper cheques that are made payable solely to you can be deposited. Items payable jointly or payable to someone else and endorsed to you will not be accepted;
• Each cheque must be in the standard format approved by Payments Canada. The date, drawee institution, payee, amount in words and figures, signature of the payor and magnetic ink character recognition information must be clearly legible;
• Each image captured through Mobile Cheque Deposit must be a picture of the original paper cheque, front and back, and not of a photocopy, PDF or printout;
• Cheques must not be post-dated or dated more than 6 months prior to the date of deposit;
• …

So many things people are overlooking, all to blame the victim.

Banks no longer check to whom the money goes, the date on cheques, and clearly check for duplicate deposits. So much fraud is possible if intended, some as noted.

Also note that if you rely on notifications from RBC, about 6+ months ago, they removed the descriptor from the email notification to tell you by whom a withdrawal or deposit is for. So, the only way to know who, is to log into your bank account... To me this is a huge security flaw.

So, as the article points out, there was confusion as to whom the withdraw when. Have you never written a cheque for the same amount, to different people, or even the same person more than once? How easy is it really to spot a duplicate cheque, unless you keep excellent and timely records, not only of amounts, but person, and cheque number? Who would anticipate the re-deposit of the same cheque? As many here, you would assume that the bank has some security to check that basic info... clearly they do not. Checking for duplicate cheque numbers would be such a simple thing to implement.

And life circumstances can be very difficult for some that prevent them from staying on top of the finances to that level all the time. Some of you here clearly have never gone through hardships to that level. Some here need to develop some compassion.

But blaming the victim is rarely the answer, especially when the bank takes away easy mechanisms that used to be in place to aid in this process, and has been clearly shown, even fail to implement some basics measures. They provide the tools yet take little responsibility? Hmmmm.

Anyway, I've said enough on this topic. Some really need to get out more, and know that life is not always as simple as you want it to be. I do not wish that you should ever experience serious hardships to help you understand.

I found CTV (August 30, 2019): Calgary man lost hundreds from double-deposited cheque:

A Calgary man lost nearly $700 after a cheque he wrote was cashed twice, once through a mobile banking app, and the second time after being signed over to someone else.

Nathan Chan wrote the cheque for $678.75 in March 2018 to a contractor.

He thought everything was fine until he recently noticed it was deposited twice; once when he handed it over and a second time four months later.
…

Cheques are bills of exchange and not general legal contracts. Bills of Exchange Act section 16 require bills of exchange to be unconditional orders. So, one can't add arbitrary conditions to cheques, like "Not valid after 30 days" or "Not valid until 14 days after deck work is completed."