‘It’s a crime. It was fraud’: Woman is out $10,000 after Chase Bank refuses to investigate check scam

MESA, Ariz. (3TV/CBS 5/Gray News) — A woman in Arizona was the victim of a very sophisticated check-cashing scam.

She mailed a $10,000 check to a relative out of state. Someone stole it and cashed it, and now her bank told both the reporter and the customer a “technicality” prevents them from investigating.

Cate Dutler said she waited months for Chase Bank to investigate a $10,000 check that she mailed out of state, a check that was stolen.

But Dutler said she just found out Chase Bank didn’t investigate at all.

“Chase Bank is doing nothing,” she said. “And they’re telling me that it’s because I missed the deadline.”

In a previous On Your Side report, Dutler explained how she mailed a check to an elderly relative in Chicago. It was a check that her relative never received.

When she logged online to her bank account to see what happened, she discovered that apparently, the check had been intercepted by a scammer, and it was altered by removing her relative’s name and writing “Unprecedented Eats” instead in the “pay to order” line.

Dutler reported the fraud to Chase Bank, which gives customers up to a year to report “altered” checks. But Chase said it’s not “altered.”

“They’re putting the onus back on me now because they’re saying that the check was counterfeit, and you only have 65 days to report a counterfeit check,” she said. “Yet if the check is altered, you get a year.”

Chase told Dutler the check was counterfeit, not altered, and the deadline for reporting a counterfeit check had already passed.

At a glance, the checks look the same. But on a close look, the “pay to the order” line is different. So is the security info on the side.

“I mean, it’s like, wow, you’re gonna hold that against me?” Dutler said.

And it gets worse. The scammer cashed the forged check at TD Bank, and Chase reassured Dutler for months that they were waiting for TD Bank to investigate.

“Every month, for three months, I’ve been getting a letter stating that they still haven’t heard back from TD Bank,” she said.

But Chase admitted it never actually contacted TD Bank and now says those letters were automatically generated. So Dutler is out $10,000, and the theft won’t even be investigated.

“It’s a crime. It was fraud,” she said. “And Chase has done nothing.”

The check was forged to say “Unprecedented Eats.” But On Your Side was unable to pin down a physical location or any information about that company.

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