The Chase Bank Glitch and Sentencing Guidelines
The Internet, well specifically TikTok and Instagram went crazy this weekend over something that scammers were dubbing “the Chase Bank Glitch”. Basically, Chase Bank’s computer systems for their ATMs were having some kind of problem negotiating the “float” which is how much money to give a customer at the initial deposit. On Thursday, Friday and part of Saturday, the Chase Bank ATM’s were making all of a deposited check readily available to customers.
This wasn’t a “glitch” at all. When customers realized that they could write a check for any amount, deposit it and then take the money off of it, they made bad checks as popular in 2024 as they were in the 1980s.
Point blank, this is bank fraud. Now understand, the initial depositing of a “fake” check and drawing money against it is classic check or bank fraud. But most people weren’t drawing against it right away. They were quickly distributing the money to other online services like Paypal, Cashapp and Chime. There, they assumed the ill gotten money was rightfully theirs to spend. Moving the money in that matter added another charge; wire fraud.
What ensued after Chase fixed the supposed “glitch” was a large number of wholier than thou armchair quarterbacks, reading the law word for word and spreading that people were going to go to prison for 20+ years. The 20 years is completely correct for any class “C” federal felony, however that is statutory time. Most people know, especially if they watch us or are our clients, that in most cases a federal defendant is not sentenced to statutory time. Federal sentences are often handed out based on the Federal guidelines.
The guidelines for check fraud, wire fraud, access device fraud and bank fraud can be found in the United States Sentencing Guidelines, specifically in the section entitled “Basic Economic Offenses”. White collar crimes are punished based on a table that matches the loss of the crime.
The actual guidelines dictate that unless you stole $95,000 or more, you’re most likely NOT going to prison, at least not for a long time. In fact, to get a fairly lengthy sentence of four years, you would have had to have stolen over $1 million dollars. Next, you might say, but it’s multiple charges. In most cases in the “feds”, multiple charges are run concurrently, so one sentence, one amount of time, encompasses all of the charges.
The Federal guidelines do call for a mandatory 2 years for each offense of “aggravated identity theft” however most of the people bragging on social media about the “Chase Bank Glitch” just did this in their own personal accounts.
Wire fraud, bank fraud, access device fraud and check fraud are all crimes, and they will haunt you forever. You will probably be banned from opening a brick and mortar bank account via Chexsystems and with the felon label it’s extremely hard to get a job. But you won’t be going to jail for 20 years, that is unless you were dumb enough to write a fake check for millions of dollars.
If you participated in the Chase Bank glitch please check out our services page and then contact us right away here.
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