Some of you may have noted JRB's link within his signature line:
Creditoris Squaliformus. I clicked on that link and got a looksee.
http://www.loansharks.blogspot.com/
First I will tell you a suitor in California spent a half hour recently in a Bank of America insisting they honor a check he had non-endorsed "Deposited for credit on account or exchanged for non-negotiable Federal Reserve Notes of equal value." He says it was real fun, mostly because in the end, after long discussion with attorneys for the Bank they capitulated and gave him the cash in United States Notes that looked just like Federal Reserve Notes.
http://friends-n-family-research.inf...rve_System.mp3
http://www.suijuris.net/forum/articl...lic-money.html
http://friends-n-family-research.inf...blic_money.jpg
http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq...al-tender.html
last paragraph of page
The reason the Bank of America was reluctant to tender the USNs to the suitor was that it was public money, not private credit of the Federal Reserve. That meant that it came out of Bank assets not as a product of the fractionalizing they can do with FRNs:
http://Friends-n-Family-Research.inf...y_of_Money.zip
Now read this deceitful sophistry in a recent article by the "honorable" Judge Roy Bean:
Quote:
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Bank of America’s “Higher Standards”
Before you walk in to your “friendly neighborhood” BofA branch to deposit a check, you better beware that at least in California, if they decide to have you falsely arrested and jailed, you can’t sue them for what they did.
A San Fransisco man found that out the hard way when he went into a BofA with a check made out to him – a check that turned out to be written by an unauthorized party on a company account. Matthew Shinnick thought he had sold his bicycles on Craigslist and didn’t want to deposit the check in his own account just in case it might bounce and hit his account with yet another creative bank fee. So he asked the teller to verify that it would clear and after a few moments, she told him it would.
Shinnick’s primary mistake was deciding to cash it instead of just depositing it. Maybe he thought having the cash in hand was better than risking a stop-payment some days in the future (and yet another bank fee). Maybe he thought that because the bank said the check wouldn’t bounce that it was good.
Either way, what he didn’t know was what the bank knew. Yes, there was money in the account to cover the check, but the check itself was bogus. The account the check was drawn on was actually flagged for potential fraudulent use. He endorsed it and the teller took it to her manager.
Four police officers soon had him in handcuffs and later led him away to jail where he spent twelve hours as a guest of the City of San Francisco crowded into a tiny holding cell with way too many other men.
And of course the charges were eventually dropped and a Judge has taken the steps to expunge all records of the case, but Shinnick and anyone else who raises the eyebrows of BofA branch employees and gets arrested for it can’t sue for false arrest. Turns out the California Supreme Court decided that criminal reports are privileged communication. Basically, institutions aren’t liable for reporting suspected crimes. (Hagberg v. California Federal Bank.)
With all the check-scamming going on, especially the typical Nigerian 419-style tricks, any time you get a check from someone you don’t know very well, don’t take it into a California bank, especially a BofA.
And even if you do just endorse it and deposit it, don’t assume that just because the money shows up as being in your account that they can’t come back and take it if it turns out to be bogus some days down the road. You might find yourself in the hole. That's still a better hole than the one the Police will put you in, though!
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean
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Upon the first glimpse, (assuming JRB based this article on a real event) what really happened here was a legitimate arrest on a bogus check at the counter. The check was not signed by an authorized signature. Furthermore JRB tries to make it out to the Reader that Shinnick was being deceptive for not wanting to deposit the suspicious check where he usually does business - that like us all Shinnick would like to avoid fines and loss of reputation where he is known. And furthermore that he chose not to deposit the check at a bank (BoA) where he has no account anyway! - that he is suspect of foulplay for cashing the check instead of opening an account with BoA and depositing it. JRB makes Shinnick sound suspect because he went to BoA and inquired if the funds were there to cover the check, all because Shinnick suspected maybe the funds were short?
All Kinnick did was assume that the signer was authorized on the Signature Card at BoA. The check was bogus and the worse journalistic offense is of course trying to make it out that the arrest was false, just because it was a misunderstanding. The offense is making the Bank of America seem to have immunity if they want to arrest you falsely, for instance like the California suitor who was non-endorsing his paycheck for the simple purpose of a non-taxable event.
I may not be reading too much into this to say JRB is trying to make Readers here think that the Bank of America has authority to arrest you, or have you arrested on a whim and you have absolutely no recourse in law about it - simply because the magistrate recognizes it was an honest mistake to allow some underling to sign a check. For instance if BoA arrests somebody for exercising their right to public money instead of the traditional and taxable private credit of the Federal Reserve, that would be an obvious false arrest and I hope that the man or woman arrested can still have lawful recourse about that. Don't you JRB?
This kind of sophistry and spin on an event depicts a much bigger problem with Judge Roy Bean and attorneys in general.
Regards,
David Merrill.