What is Check Washing, and How Can You Prevent It?

The use of paper checks has plummeted over the years, with many people switching to online options for paying bills, cards and digital wallets for purchases, and apps like Venmo for person-to-person payments.

However, paper checks are still used, especially in business-to-business transactions, and a type of fraud known as Check Washing continues to be an ongoing threat.

Check Washing is pretty much what it sounds like: someone illegally obtains a check, uses a solvent (nail polish remover in some cases) to remove the payee’s name and sometimes the dollar amount, fill in these blanks with fraudulent information, then attempt to cash the check.

When paper checks were more common, thieves would simply steal outgoing mail left in residential mailboxes and attempt to alter any checks they found. In recent years, they have targeted outside mail collection boxes, either by breaking into the box or by robbing postal workers of their keys when they arrive to collect the mail.

Here are some Check Washing prevention tips (according to an AARP article):

• Pay your bills online. Nowadays this is a far safer option than putting a check in and dropping it in a mailbox;
• Go inside the post office if you’re mailing a check, instead of using the outdoor box (especially after the last pickup of the day);
• Use a blue or black gel ink pen. This type of ink is far more difficult to remove with solvents;
• Don’t let mail sit in your mailbox. A mailbox stuffed with several days’ worth of mail can be an attractive target for a potential scammer;
• Use online banking to keep track of your accounts, a few times a week if not daily;
• Report suspicious activity quickly, both to your financial institution and to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service if a check has cleared for a different amount and a different payee than you wrote it for.

I would add one thought to the third tip (using a gel pen): if a gel pen is making it harder for a scammer to alter your check, at this point they already have it in their hands. Your account number and your financial institution’s routing number are still fully visible on the check, along with your name and home address. It’s a lot of information to put into a criminal’s hands at once. Your best bet is to reduce your reliance on paper checks as much as possible.