Does anyone have any experience with BOOST, a worthless check "middle man"? They claim to offer national-level merchants the simplicity of streamlining those merchant's check collections with local prosceutor's offices. BOOST also handles the electronic checks where a merchant scans the check, has the customer sign a receipt acknowledging the electronic debit, then gives the check back to the them. Any issues there?

Wesley, we're going to give BOOST a try in my county, so long as the merchants involved confirm that it's okay to send reimbursement back through BOOST, including the merchant collection fee. Frankly, this may, at least in the short term, save our hot check program from an agonizing death, because we'll again be processing hot checks from major merchants such as Wal-Mart, who had forsaken our free service. We're working out the electronic transfer logistics to make sure we can still operate in a prosecutorial mode, rather than just as a collector.

We've been talking to them. The issue, for me, is identification of the defendant. If we can get the name of the person who dealt with the defendant(and their date of birth, so we can find them later, then we have the irreducible minimum to pursue a theft charge. Their current set-up does not have this information, but I think they are coming to the understanding that a different quantum of information is needed to prove a criminal case than is needed to simply collect a debt.

The echeck issues Wesley mentions need someone smarter than I to hash out, but as John B points out (with the use of several $5.00 words), identification of the witness who accepted payment is crucial.

I was justing getting used to using the merchant applied "fingerprint" of the check passer. It sure made forgery cases easier to resolve.

Wesley's issue is actually pretty interesting: When the merchant scans the magnetic numbers off your check to convert it into an ACH debit, returns the check, and you sign the little slip (a contract) allowing them to take the money from your account, does the little slip become a "similar sight order" that would allow us to use the Section 31.06 Presumption for Theft by Check. That section applies when the actor obtain(s) property...by issuing..a check or similar sight order.

Interesting, but we don't even get there if we can't ID the check writer.

The only transaction in which the victim hands the thief the evidence of the crime so he/she can destroy it.

Boost claims to standardize the process from the merchant's end, so that they will all come to us. Wal-Mart told us they left because they were tired of conforming to every other jurisdiction's different way of doing things. I told Boost, fine, just give me what I need and you can do whatever you want for the merchants -- it doesn't chanage the way I do business. Well, now they have sent a sample that is insufficient for our needs. We use the full-size certified image of the check or the check itself, but they want to send an unofficial image or a copy of that receipt Wal-Mart is handing out as the promise to pay. And further, I understand Wal-Mart is still going to collect on checks like they do now (in-house) and will only be using Boost to kick cases back to us that they could not collect on. Personally, I like having a full-size check or the copy that I can pull personal info from, or compare handwriting to, instead of some miniature version or a receipt with one illegible signature.

So, why are we agreeing to accept cases that can't be proved and that only benefit the collections of a corporation that won't make better decisions on how they run their business?

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Originally posted by JB:
So, why are we agreeing to accept cases that can't be proved and that only benefit the collections of a corporation that won't make better decisions on how they run their business?

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+1