Tomchei Tzedakah of Lakewood has released the following alert to the media:
Tomchei Tzedakah just received a call from someone in Lakewood that $7300 was withdrawn from his account – this past Motzoei Shabbos he had written a much smaller check to someone that had come to his door and the check had been altered and cashed. We then received another call with almost the exact same story – this time for $8700.
At this point we have very little additional information and are investigating. Please check your bank accounts and take whatever precautions you can.
Please feel free to email us at [email protected] or call us at 732-367-7770 or at 848-210-5188 f you have any information that may be useful or if you have also been victimized.
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5 Responses
Be very careful how you write out checks. Insist on writing the name of the Payee; start writing the amount in words at the far left of the line, write the word ONLY after the amount in words. In the $ box put a slash before the amount and a slash after the amount, don’t leave any space to add anything. If you take these basic precautions it will be very difficult to make any changes to a check that will not be easily discernible.
An alternative to giving a check or cash is possible by the following suggestion. A donor sets up an account with a specific organization and receives monetary coupons to that amount which he can then give to what ever charity he desires. The person collecting, then goes to the implementing organization and receives from them a check to the amount of the coupon. In Lakewood, that organization can be Tomchei Tzedakah. This will eliminate the above issue since every collector in Lakewood is prescreened and all their information is on file.
Something to be careful about anytime someone is in your house. Keep your eye on your checkbook. While your back is turned or you are distracted, someone can tear a few blank checks out of your checkbook and fill them in later and cash them before you realize any checks are missing. (I work in a shul office and this happened to our Rav when he was distributing tzedakah checks on Purim day – with a lot of people waiting on line to receive checks.)
Wow. I’m amazed that people have enough cash in their checking accounts to clear $8700 checks. As for me, I’m not concerned. A check with these numbers would bounce sky high…
#1 you are correct
#2, come on, we cant give cash to collectors anymore, do we really need to make a “system” out of everything, shud we have an app and every collector would carry a barcode reader with him/her. or maybe we could leave our phone outside the shul and the collector would scan everyones phone, the list goes on, but I prefer cash!