WaMu Gave Grandma's Money to Crooks

It is probably worth noting that when my mom contacted Wamu after my grandma discovered the first unauthorized check on her account, she requested that only checks signed by my grandmother be cashed. WM replied that this was not possible.

Also, when I tried to contact the number listed for verifying authorization on the second check (the PowerTamers one) (see below), I was dumped in a dead voicemail box. This suggests that Wamu in fact never even tried to verify the authenticity of the second check. I suppose it's possible that the number had been abandoned within the last couple weeks after WM had contacted someone and assured themselves of the check's authority -- or, more to the point, assured themselves that they could deny responsibility for cashing it. But I find it more probably that, like Stephen Jay Gould in that episode of the Simpsons with the angel bones, they simply never did the test.