CNN iReport

March 14, 2009

Who Goes To A Bank and Forges A Signature On A Money Order in 2009!

By Alberta Parish

This is the news I recently received regarding a money order I'd been waiting on for one month and one week now. So imagine my surprise when I was told that someone had cashed this money order at a bank somewhere in Georgia. At first, I believed it but then I thought about this scenario further and have concluded that this is damn near impossible. First off, you have to bring two forms of identification to the bank in order to cash a money order or check. If you don't have a checking/savings account at the bank, the bank teller will then ask you to press your thumb into the black ink and then press it against the money order or check. This is used for further identification in order to make sure that the person making a thumbprint on the money order or check is the same person to whom the money order or check is made payable to. You have to either be a very dumb criminal to walk into a bank (with cameras) and forge someone's signature on a money order, or you have to want to go to jail and be a professional jailbird. Why would any sane person jeopardize himself or herself in this manner?

Can somebody please explain to me how someone can walk into a bank, cash a money order made payable to somebody else, and actually walk out of the bank with the cash if proper banking procedures were followed by the bank teller? I truly don't believe this money order was cashed a bank. I don't even believe the money order was ever physically sent. This story about the money order being cashed at a bank seems farfetched and so unrealistic that it comes across as a fictionalized short story. I mean, what do you guys think?