
When OCR goes wrong: man settles discrimination lawsuit, bank won't cash check - mmhsieh
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020/01/23/tcf-bank-race-discrimination-case-sauntore-thomas/4546199002/
======
eesmith
There's nothing about OCR in the article.

The closest is: "He said the checks Thomas presented displayed a watermark
that read VOID when they were scanned in a web viewer."

This is a feature of some security paper -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_pantograph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_pantograph)
says "In security printing, void pantograph refers to a method of making copy-
evident and tamper-resistant patterns in the background of a document.
Normally these are invisible to the eye, but become obvious when the document
is photocopied. Typically they spell out "void", "copy", "invalid" or some
other indicator message"

What it means is their system wasn't at high enough resolution. Which should
be expected. Which means they are either extremely poorly trained, or they are
looking for an excuse.

Note the following from the freep article:

> According to TCF's Wennerberg ... Thomas wanted to deposit the two larger
> checks in his bank account, which, Wennerberg said, had only 52 cents in it.
> And he wanted to cash the $13,000 check,

Does your bank generally tell people how much is in your account, and what
your bank transactions are?

~~~
mmhsieh
they were using organic OCR embedded in the skulls of their employees.

------
planetzero
"They couldn't verify that those checks were due to a settlement," said
Wennerberg, adding the bank contacted Enterprise to verify that the checks
were part of a lawsuit, but were unable to do so"

He tried to cash three different large checks and the bank was unable to
verify that these were actually legitimate. Calling the police was the correct
thing tod do here.

It was sorted out, but he is now launching another lawsuit (most likely for
large sums of money). This tells me more about the person trying to cash the
check than the bank here.

"Wennerberg said the assistant manager who waited on Thomas was African
American, and felt that something didn't "look right," so she called police."

More proof that this wasn't racial and more to do with the suspicious nature
of trying to cash 3 large checks and being unable to verify.

~~~
mmhsieh
i am not accusing this fellow of wrongdoing: but a truly cynical person could
identify banks that have the worst OCR, glitch it, and create a litigable
event.

if we can turn stop signs into pandas, i think we can cause a paper check to
make OCR go kablooie.

~~~
eesmith
Why are you so insistent that OCR has anything to do with this news event?

What litigable event are you even considering?

Checks use MICR, not OCR -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recogni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recognition)
.

Elsewhere you tried to say it was the "organic OCR embedded in the skulls of
[...] employees", so now you think people's _brains_ will go kablooie?

