Check-raising Made Easy

One of the first lessons, for instance, that a depositor should learn

before he is qualified to own a check-book is to commence writing the

amount as near as possible to the extreme left of the check. Those who

forget this are often reminded of it in a costly way. Some one raises

their checks by writing another figure in front of the proper amount.

Five hundred might be raised to twenty-five hundred in this way,

even b an unskilled forger.



The highest court has recently decided that a bank cannot be held

responsible, when it pays a raised check, if the maker of the check

failed in the first place to write it out correctly. The treasurer of

the Bath Electric Company, of Bath, Maine, had written a check for one

hundred dollars, which was raised to eighty-one hundred dollars and

cashed. The court held that the company, and not the bank, should lose

the eight thousand dollars, because of the gross carelessness in

drawing up the check. Facsimiles showing the check as originally written

and as it looked when paid are here reproduced.