I had a rather nasty experience in which I sold a Laverda RGS 1000 to a New Zealander when I was living in Sydney. I accepted a genuine bank cheque in payment, I even checked with the bank by phone to make sure it was ok.

The cheque was deposited in my bank but 3 days later I was advised that the issuing bank had refused to clear the cheque.

It turned out that my buyer had broken into the house of his neighbour, who was on holidays, and had taken an investment deposit book that had a credit balance of over $35K (about $80K in today's money). He then went and made some deposits into the account, posing as the real owner, and getting himself well known to the bank staff by joking with them and so on. He then started to buy furniture, stereo systems, and so on, plus my bike, using banker's cheques fraudulently obtained against the stolen account book.

Naturally when the neighbour came home he eventually discovered the theft and it seems the police just missed arresting the thief by about 30 minutes as he flew out of Australia. They knew all the goods must be in a container being shipped to NZ but could not locate it in time. In the end the guy got away free as the cost of extradition would have been more than the value of the theft.

I did get paid in the end, with the help of the Banking Ombudsman, as I argued that I had accepted a genuine bank cheque in good faith and that the issuing bank could not pass off the consequences of a fraud against them to an innocent third party.

Peter

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