Possible Fraud with Security Deposit?

[Sarah Jones]

Hello! I own an apartment in Washington, DC, and have personally managed it for years, and I recently had some extended drama in paying back part of a security deposit to a tenant that had broken their lease.

They claimed that the check never arrived in the mail, so after giving plenty of time ensure that this was true, and putting a stop payment order on the check, I sent them the payment via PayPal to ensure that we had no more mail issues. The next week, I see that somebody had, in fact, deposited the check that I originally sent over a month ago, the first day possible after I made the transfer via PayPal. I confronted my former tenant about this, and he is claiming that somebody must have stolen his identity, which seems highly improbable to me, especially given the timing. What's especially strange is that we have never had an issue until we starting dealing with this lease cancellation and returning the deposit, at which time, the tenant began to be extremely hostile.

The scanned image of the check online has no endorsement, but it does have a stamp on it, verifying the time that it was deposited, but not giving any specific bank information.

I asked the representatives at my bank, and they verified that the check had, in fact, gone through on the other bank's end, but had been stopped when it got to my bank since I put the stop payment order on it. However, the bank representatives have not been able to determine which bank deposited the check, although I suspect that that information is available with some deeper digging.

A few questions:

1. Under what circumstances is it possible for a check to be deposited without an endorsement?

2. Is it possible to make a mobile deposit into an account that is not one's own?

3. Is it at all possible that this is a case of identity theft on his end, and if so, how?

Thank you for the help!

[Kyle J.]

It sounds like your ex-tenant was likely involved based on the timing of when the check was cashed, but why bother spending any time looking into it? Your bank did what they were supposed to do and stopped payment so you shouldn't be out any money. Just be glad your done with this tenant and move on.