At yesterday’s AHA (Vic) Partner Briefing, Dean Cleary and Vanessa Hastie advised us of a recent uplift in the instances of fraudulent large-win cheques being presented.  Initially it was an issue with poor cheque writing, however it has now extended to elaborate cheque “washing” where the payee and amount in words and figures are erased and rewritten.

Dean’s advice was as follows:

“It is obviously difficult to prevent these fraudulent transactions but from a venue point of view, however the following would be recommended as a minimum process to reduce the risk when issuing gaming winnings cheques:

•  Always obtain 100 points of Identification which would generally mean two forms of current ID.
• Issue cheques from an area that has camera operation
• Always complete the cheque fully utilising the gaps available for writing and draw a line through areas of the cheque that are not used.
• Mark the cheque as “Non Negotiable” so it needs to be deposited to an account and not cashed via cash chequing businesses.
• Pay out in Cash wherever possible.
• Reconcile Gaming account cheques on a daily basis via your Online Banking to identify discrepancies immediately. (Once a cheque has been identified as being fraudulent, Banks only have 24 hours to dishonour the cheque.)
• Be wary of individuals that are unknown and specifically ask for cheque payment.
• The discovery of any fraudulent activities should be reported to Victoria Police which will assist the Venue with any possible refund if cheques get negotiated prior to being discovered.”

We recommend that all venues review their cheque writing procedures as soon as possible.

Thanks to Dean (CLEARYD@bankofmelbourne.com.au) and Vanessa (HASTIEV@bankofmelbourne.com.au) for the advice.

Contributed by David Gow