Does a bank have to tell me if a check made out to me was cashed there?

Question

I moved out of a place and I was supposed to receive my last pay check there. I think my housemate deposited it in his account. I know banks are not supposed to, but it's in a small town so people trust people more.

Also, my housemate and I worked at the same place. He and the boss are best friends. It's a Minit Mart gas station where we worked, and the boss will not tell me my Paycor access code for payroll or email it to me. Human Resources won't call back but the boss said the check should have already arrived.

So I called his bank to see if my check was cashed there. The man on the phone took all my information and put me on hold, then he came back and said, "I can't tell you that information." I asked, "What if I come in, bring all my identification?" He still said, "No".

Do I have the right to know if my check was deposited in my housemate's account without my permission? My name was never with his bank account and I don't have a bank account of my own.

Answer 1

You are going about this wrong.

To start with your actual question, no your friend's bank has no duty or right to tell you about anything that your friend did as part of their banking.

What you need to do is this.

1. Go to your employer and tell them you did not receive your paycheque. If they say it was delivered to your address get them to put that in writing and ask if they have proof, such as registered delivery. If they are not sure, wait until enough time has passed that it definitely should have arrived, and then tell them it is missing and ask them to make another one. (This should not be a problem for them as they can stop the old one if it hasn't been cashed).
2. If they are completely sure it was delivered, or has been cashed, tell them you think the cheque was stolen. Ask if the cheque was cashed and if they can find who cashed it. They should be able to find out from their bank who cashed it. Tell them you will be contacting the police to try to find it.
3. Go to your housemates and tell them that the cheque was definitely delivered to their address. Ask them if they are sure it was not delivered. Tell them you will be contacting the police to track the cheque down.
4. Go to your bank and tell them you suspect a cheque made out to you was stolen. They may be able to help.
5. Go to the police. Tell them everything you know. They have the power to get the information you want from the banks.
6. You may also be able to pursue a claim for unpaid wages, but you would need to get a lawyer to advise you in that.

It's best not to accuse people unless you have evidence. But if the cheque was stolen by someone you know, mentioning the police may cause them to suddenly find the cheque or give you another one.

Answer 2

No, they do not. However that is the wrong side of an XY problem. You really want your paycheck! As such I will answer that. This is called a "frame challenge" and is legit here.

Also keep in mind they have 14 days to prepare your last check, plus mailing time. It simply may not have arrived yet.

You are overthinking this. And missing the point.

The relevant thing is you did not get your paycheck. Full STOP.

Yes, I know you have a brain full of very complex stories that you want to spew in stream-of-consciousness fashion, as we've seen in OP and two answers so far. Stop doing that Right Now because you have no idea what actually happened. All your guesswork is unconstructive. In fact if I was your roommate and you went around town saying that about me, I'd take your next hundred paychecks because that is slander.

You don't know. It might have been destroyed in a mail-bin fire. It might have fallen out of the postal carrier's bag. It might be delayed in the mail. The roommate might be holding it for you and forgot.

Keep in mind too. Everyone you need to help you is lazy and would love to find a reason to NOT help you.

So you go to your employer (walk right into their shop!!!) and you say

I never got my last paycheck. (fullstop)

That is a serious problem and there are big consequences for cheating an employee out of their last check. They don't want to deal with a Labor Commission investigation after all. Therefore, they will want to help you.

Now consider what happens if you start running your mouth with your big fat story about your suspicions about your roommate. Nobody wants to deal with an opinionated idiot, so they'll say "sounds like you DO know where your paycheck went, so you don't need us. Best of luck dealing with him, Buh-bye."

So keep your trap shut.

Of course they will say "It was delivered to so-and-so address." And you say

I don't live there anymore.

Did you notice the part where you stop talking? Good.

They might also ask "Did you check with anyone there to see if they received it?"

I did. They assure me they did not receive it.

AND SHUT UP. Yes, I know you are exploding with the urge to tell them your whole conspiracy theory about your roommate cashing it. Shut up shut up shut up. You don't know and guesswork only hurts.

Now who knows what's going to happen? They will investigate of course, but they will want to see if you in fact did cash it. It should be apparent in their invesigation that you did not, so they should reissue it without further ado. If this check was stolen by someone, they will chargeback the account it was deposited into, which would suck for that person. This is a big bag of Not Your Problem. The system will deal with it. You don't have to be Nancy Drew here.

My employer refused to deal with me / talk to me

Then you go straight to your state's Labor Commission and file a complaint. This is pretty easy, and the employer will really, really, really hate it.

My employer worked with me, but swears I cashed the check

Then straight to the police and report check fraud. They can dig into which account it was deposited into and who owns that account, or if it was cashed at a pink neon check cashing place, the cops can force them to pull their CCTV tapes and see who stood there and cashed it. All of this is also **a big bag of Not Your Problem.

Don't Nancy Drew this stuff, becuse in the real world, people who play Veronica Mars/amiss Marple/Agatha Raisin get treated as suspects because they know too much.

At some point in the investigation, it's possible a cop will ask you "Do you have any suspicions about what happened?"

Now. Finally! Now! You get to tell your crazy story.

But the next thing he'll say is "Do you have any reason to believe this?"

Answer 3

Wage theft is a serious matter. If your former housemate's friendship with your former boss resulted in your wages for your final paycheck being diverted (i.e. deposited) to your friend's bank account, it would be criminal activity by your former employer, Minit Mart, by your former boss if he facilitated it, and by your friend for taking part.

All banks are subject to KYC ("Know Your Customer") requirements. Any bank that accepted a check for deposit that was payable to you and only you, but was not endorsed by you, and for which your name was not on the depositor account, could be subject to criminal charges at a federal level. There is an entire division that concerns itself with such matters, FinCEN aka Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. FinCEN has authority whether you live in a small community with high levels of personal trust or not.

Regarding Paycor, you may wish to do the following:

Employees of a Paycor client company can contact their company's HR department for questions about payroll, time cards & other HR matters. For general information about Paycor, please call 800.381.0053 or contact us online.

Answer 4

There is no bank in the United States that could answer your question even if they wanted to. Banks maintain a photographic copy of all items in the order they were processed by the bank’s proof department, for those that use them, and in the order of teller presentation if they do not use a proof operation. Items are assigned numbers, starting with 1 and continuing until they run out of numbers and start over. There is no way to look up any one item unless you first get a copy of the original item, which you do not have.

A bank can find a check in one of two ways. The first is to know the specific transaction as it processed through a specific account. There is a tracking number that allows the recall of the item’s image. The other way is to present a copy of the original item from the issuer’s bank. It allows the tracking of the item by the numbers stamped on it. In the worst case, it can be traced via database searches for items with the same routing and transit number, account number, and dollar amount.

No bank could ever do what you ask. A small bank would process 250-350 thousand items per day. Which one? For a large bank, it is in the hundreds of millions.

It is also irrelevant to your problem. The issue is between you and your employer. Even if your roommate committed fraud, they are not part of the resolution of this as far as you are concerned.

Go to your employer. There are many potential explanations. You have no legal capacity to run this down yourself. For that matter, neither do the police without a warrant. Your employer is the only answer here.

If they say it was cashed, then you will need to fill out an affidavit of forgery and get the check reissued, and you could then involve the police. If it was not cashed, then they will likely require you to wait. It could be due to postal delays or have been lost in the mail. They will also have an internal processing time for replacement checks.

The only time you would involve an attorney would be in the case where it was not cashed, and they would not reissue. In that case, you are probably going to be out of luck as the amount is small, and the attorney probably wouldn’t bother taking your case. You could involve the state’s Attorney General or the state’s wage and hour commission. If they are not paying though, then they probably lack the funds and so you would be trying to get blood out of a rock.