entered the personal check business. At first, DeLuxe sold only to banks. Then it began to sell directly to individuals by mail. Banks didn't like the idea, but DeLuxe didn't back off. The three other check companies said, well, we'd never do that. But one by one, they entered the business. Since the late 1980s, advertisements like this have appeared in newspapers and in direct mail: "Get two hundred checks for just $3.95. Or get one hundred fifty duplicate checks for only $4.95." There are more than 200 companies that sell checks through magazines and the Internet. And there are no controls over them. It's all perfectly legal.
People can get anyone's check. All they have to do is see it. Criminals nowadays will drive around until they find a ritzy neighborhood with million-dollar homes. They'll knock on a door. When someone answers, they'll say, "Boy, you've got a lot of leaves lying on your lawn. What'd you got, an acre here? I'll tell you what, my buddy and I will clean up your leaves, leave the place immaculate, and it'll cost you just seventy-five dollars." The guy thinks it's a great deal, the crooks clean up the leaves, and the owner pays them with a check for seventy-five dollars. That's all they came for: the check. Then they go to the Internet and order the checks of a guy from a million-dollar home, forge them, and start cashing them. Next time, the guy will rake his own leaves.
Or forgers drive to a wealthy neighborhood and park in a grocery store parking lot. They wait until you pull in in your Porsche or your Jaguar and they follow you into the store. You buy groceries. You have to write your check on a little pad that's sticking up on the counter. They're right next to you, loading items onto the counter. They look over your shoulder - most of them are women - and they can memorize your check in eight seconds. All they have to do is glance over your shoulder. You haven't gotten past writing the date, and they've memorized it. Everything on it. They go back and fill out an order coupon. Name and address you'd like on the check? They put your name and address on the check. Style of check? You've got flags on your check, so they order checks with flags. How many? Two hundred. Last question: if you'd like these checks sent to an address other than the printed address on the face of the check, so state here. They fill in a P.O. Box. Ten days later, they've got your checks.
And don't think these activities are limited to personal checks. A Fortune 500 company in Chicago got ripped off when somebody outside the organization ordered the company's business checks through a catalogue - and all he gave them to put on the check was the company's name and address. He didn't know where the company banked. He didn't have an account number. He didn't know who signed the checks. The person ordered two hundred of the company's checks and had them sent to him. Then he went to all the grocery stores he could get to and cashed them, because the company was a household word and employed thousands of people. Its checks were gold.
Not long ago, a company in Long Beach, Calif., got a disturbing invoice in the mail from its check printer. The company's checks were being shipped to 110th Street in Los Angeles. The problem was, the company didn't have an office there. Someone had reordered the company's checks and changed the ship-to location to 110th Street. The printer had gotten the reorder with an address change and had simply processed it. One way things like this happen is that criminals recruit company employees to steal check reorder forms. Or they buy them. A stolen check reorder form is worth one hundred dollars on the street.
WHAT TO DO
The solution is to order checks through your bank, not a mail-order catalogue. A crook can't waltz into Chase or Citibank and try to order your checks. And when you buy checks through a bank, they usually have more security features on them to prevent forgeries. Mail-order houses don't bother with these things, and that's why their prices are lower. [Although prices may soar if other states follow Illinois's example: Illinois, to my knowledge, is the first state to pass a law actually making it a felony to order someone else's checks. If