Man finally gets his money back after 17-month battle with banks over altered checks

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A DeKalb County man says a thief stole his checks from the mail and managed to cash them.

He has been fighting with two major banks for nearly two years now to fix this.

That’s when he turned to Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray, who finally got him results.

The thieves just added a zero to the dollar amount on the checks and signed the back -- didn’t even change the written dollar amount.

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Not the way a company deposits checks, but the bank went ahead and cashed it anyway.

“It’s totally bogus. Why Bank of America accepted that I don’t know,” George Nikas told Gray.

Nikas has been asking that same question for 17 months now.

“I’m totally frustrated. They want me to give up, but I have not given up. And help! That’s what I’ll say,” Nikas said.

Channel 2 Action News first reported on Nikas in April when he called Gray for help.

Someone stole checks he’d written to pay bills from the mail and simply added zeros, and signed the back.

They cashed $9,000 worth of checks at Bank of America.

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“Did Georgia Power walk into the bank and say, ‘Hi, I’m Georgia Power?’ No,” Nikas said.

It was not a complicated scheme but trying to get help from two big banks to get his money back -- that’s a different story.

“Everything they’ve asked, countless times. Claim form 10, maybe 11 times. I’ve seen it in. And each time it’s as if it didn’t exist or not. Their problem,” Nikas said.

Maybe the strangest thing, Chase and Bank of America, have returned some of the money over the course of several months.

It was the same scheme with all the checks, but the biggest -- $3,700 -- they still won’t return.

“Seventeen months is a very long time, and somebody needs to take responsibility. And it’s not mine. I didn’t do anything wrong. I pay my bills. I put them in the mailbox,” Nikas said.

Finally, Bank of America has told Gray they have refunded the money to Chase who will send it to Nikas ending this 17-month ordeal.

RELATED NEWS:

Man out thousands of dollars after crooks change checks made out to large companies Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray has covered several stories on check washing, where the criminal changes out the name on a check.

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