Cheque Washing

Cheque washing (also spelled check washing) uses common household chemicals to remove ballpoint pen ink from a legitimate cheque without damaging the paper or pre-printed bank information. The thief then fills in a new payee name, a higher dollar amount, or both, and deposits or cashes the altered instrument.

Cheques are typically stolen from physical mailboxes — fraudsters target blue collection boxes and residential mailboxes during bill-payment seasons. Remote deposit capture (mobile cheque scanning) has made washing even more lucrative because altered cheques can be deposited digitally and the criminal never needs to visit a branch.

Protection measures include using gel pens (whose ink binds to paper fibres and resists washing), writing amounts both numerically and in words, mailing cheques inside a post office rather than a street box, and monitoring accounts for unexpected cleared cheques.