We have a customer that their CPA called our bookkeeping department complaining that a check they wrote for 5,000 was taken out of her account as 50,000. The person she wrote the check to says that they only got 5,000. We did not do the encoding so, our bank got a copy of the check and the encoding at the bottom of the check is 5,000 from the receiving bank. The encoding underneath that, is 50,000. The clincher to this one is the check was written in Nov. 2005 The customer just called us this week (Feb 2007). The bank sent it to the FED for adjustment, they say that they cannot do anything since it has been more than a year (they say they destroy everything after a year).
Is there anything else our bank can do to resolve this issue? Can our bank be held liable? Is there anything requiring a bank to do verification on large items? Any help will be GREATLY appreciated. Please point me to documentation I can use to back up if I need it. Thank you.

How does someone miss $45k for over a year??? I freak if i am missing 45 cents!

Obviously, either you as the bank or your customer is going to have to go after whoever it was that pocketed the extra $45,000. Hopefully, whoever that was somehow missed that they wrongfully collected that much money and will be more than willing to just give back the money, so to speak.

If they don't, however, then there would probably be no choice but to pursue litigation.

Whether it would be the bank's or the customer's situation to pursue... I can't give you any specific regulations, but I suspect if you and your customer have to get in to litigation, you have it going in your favor that, if you've been providing statements as required, your customer has some kind of gross negligence for not having reported this error to you in a timely manner.

If I'm not mistaken, our customers are given 60 days to report any errors found on their bank statements.

This varies state by state...some states only give 30 days.

I would check with legal counsel and state law before you move forward.