The bank negotiates a forged check, and the careless customer from Sciacca is compensated 50% of the amount.

Last Updated: July 22, 2023

#Agrigento
The court of Sciacca has sentenced a bank to compensate a thirty-year-old local resident with half the amount of a cashier’s check for 17 thousand euros. The check had been issued by the bank at the request of the individual himself. The check was intended for the purchase of a car that he had seen on an internet website. He had engaged in a private negotiation with the seller for this purchase. As a guarantee of the seriousness of the transaction, the seller requested a photograph of the check from the future buyer, which was taken with a smartphone and sent via WhatsApp to the recipient. From that moment on, the aspiring car buyer lost all contact with the presumed seller. Suspecting that he had been deceived, he went to the bank and found out that the check, although cloned and obtained from a photo, had been regularly negotiated at a branch in Anzio. Disappointed that, from his point of view, the bank had not performed the necessary anti-fraud checks, he filed two complaints: the first against unknown individuals in an attempt (thus far unsuccessful) to identify the fraudsters, and the second against the banking institution, accusing it of having violated its responsibilities by not realizing that the check accepted at the counter was counterfeit. However, in the resulting legal proceedings, the judge only partially accepted the plaintiff’s request, recognizing both the bank’s negligent responsibility for negotiating a counterfeit check and, at the same time, the imprudence of the buyer in photographing and sending the negotiable instrument via WhatsApp. Hence the decision to compensate the plaintiff, represented by lawyers Luigi Licari and Paolo Porretta, with only half the amount of the cashier’s check, which the bank will have to reimburse.