Altered Check

Spelled different, this one could be about Ivan Lendl's nose job. Instead, in general, an "altered check" is just what the term implies: a check that has been altered in some way.

Take a check (like the kind your grandpa used to write in order to pay his milk delivery bill) and change it in some way: add a zero at the end of the amount, jigger the letters in the payee section to make it show a different name, etc. Any kind of messing around with the written elements of the document creates an altered check.

Altered checks can happen by accident or for innocent reasons. Banks usually have procedures of how to handle these honest errors. However, the main fear comes from the fact that altered checks represent a major source of fraud, making financial institutions wary of accepting them without additional documentation.