For any 'entrepreneurial' young people who may have missed the movie 'Catch Me If You Can', which admittingly was released in 2002, and may think the "Chase Money Glitch" is a good idea. Spoiler alert, It's not.
Much like Frank Abagnale, Jr., (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) in the blockbuster movie, young people have discovered that Chase Bank was releasing the balance of their cheque immediately without putting a hold on the funds. This news has spread like wildfire over TikTok as the "Chase Money Glitch" and with this catchy new name gives the impression that it is not, in fact, a crime. Though easy money is always attractive and influencers online are constantly flaunting their wealth it is no surprise that the young or uneducated would fall prey to the viral crime disguised as a trend. If they had seen the 2002 movie they would know that Leonardo DiCaprio's character was committing cheque fraud before computers or the internet were widely available and was moving banks at lightning speed to stay ahead of the authorities. Unlike Frank Abagnale, Jr. young people were lining up at Chase Bank to deposit fraudulent cheques of exorbitant amounts using their own bank accounts, linked to their real name, and many of them recording the incident for social media.
A spokesperson for Chase Bank told The Post: "Consumers should be skeptical, and if something seems too good to be true, it likely is. We are aware of the incident, and it has been addressed. Regardless of what you see online, depositing a fraudulent check and withdrawing the funds from your account is fraud, plain and simple."
One can see how many youth would be lulled into trusting the viral trends on the internet for financial advice. This can be seen especially after the advent of the short squeeze of the GameStop stock in January 2021. With many investing guard rails taken away to allow mass trading on a scale usually unavailable to the average consumer a true 'disruption' of the system was able to take place. That is untill regulators "entered the chat" and shut down the apps allowing trading to rescue the financial system. Though technically not a crime, white collar traders have been manipulating the stock market since its inception, it is a shady practice. So in the end young investors got to keep their winnings after playing a game usually only relegated to the rich and powerful. It is no surprise that after this example those looking for a quick buck would believe that lightning has indeed struck twice.
Caution would be advised after the FTX fiasco of 2022 when Sam Bankman-Fried learned the hard way that his crypto investment 'disruption' was nothing but an old fashioned Ponzi Scheme. What goes around seems to come around as times change and communication channels evolve. Those who were around in the 1980s to see the Ron Rewald Ponzi Scheme are not sharing their knowledge on TikTok, partially because of the demographic, and partially because they assume they don't HAVE to tell people not to be involved in Ponzi Schemes, crypto or no. Before the echo-chamber of TikTok the guardrails of the established financial system ensured some level of education had to be established before thrusting one's finances, or even better someone else's finances, into the volatile market.
The 'Chase Bank Glitch' is a cautionary tale to not blindly follow what you see on the internet and that sometimes 'disrupting' the system isn't all it is cracked up to be. While taking risks and innovation is part of the 'entrepreneurial mindset', sometimes a traditional financial system has been set up with checks and balances for consumer safety. Hopefully the new generation of investors and business people will take heed that the best defense to misinformation is financial literacy. Perhaps we have the resurgence of the 'Pyramid Scheme' to look forward to next if financial literacy is left by the wayside and old crimes continue to be repackaged as 'glitches' or 'disruptions'. Though there may be many gatekeepers to financial knowledge there are many who are happy to advise and teach, and learning about financial laws is always better done in a classroom rather than a courtroom.
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