One suburban woman's desperate effort to recover $40,000 lost from forged check

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Her check for more than $40,000 never arrived in the mail.

It didn't get lost. She said someone took it and cashed it.

Morning Insider Lauren Victory dives into a suburban woman's case of check fraud.

Jing Ma's fur babies are getting a lot of nervous pets these days from their panicked fur momma.

"You're the only channel that got back to me so that means a lot to me," said Ma. Reaching out to the news is her last-ditch effort to solve a costly mystery: how did someone cash her check for $41,530.06?

"I'm not just gonna sit around and do nothing," Ma said. So she's talked with police and filed a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"I sent a message- a LinkedIn message- to the BMO Harris Bank CEO," said Ma. It was worth a try because BMO Harris Bank is where her troubles began.

On June 16, she closed her checking and savings accounts. The balances were supposed to be sent to her via cashiers checks through the mail.

"I received the first check on June 22," said Ma. That check was for about $2,000 from her savings but weeks went by with no mail containing her checking account check. So she called BMO Harris.

"The agent said my check has been already cashed out," said Ma who swears it was not cashed out by her. 

"I was shocked," she said. "How did that happen to me? I thought that was something you saw on TV."

Bankers showed Ma a copy of the cashed cashier's check. Ma said it's not her signature on the back and she noticed something else.

"My first name J-i-n-g. And if you look at that check, it's kind of spelled like J-i-a-n-g so that wasn't even my name," she said.

Ma said bank investigators suggested sticky fingers during transit could be to blame – mail theft. United States Postal Service inspectors made more than 1,500 mail theft arrests in a single year, nationwide.

Ma doesn't buy it.

"The neighborhood that I live is nice and friendly. Nobody would go through a mail box," she said.

Whatever happened, the same day that CBS2 reached out to BMO Harris, Ma was issued a replacement check.

"I'm so relieved," she told us in a follow-up interview outside the bank.

So what happened?

And why did Ma get the runaround until CBS2 got involved?

BMO Harris won't say.

We do know whoever got the cashier's check took it to a Chase Bank branch.

Chase won't say why they accepted it.

Here is the official statement from BMO Harris:

"We are committed to working with our customers to help keep them safe from financial crime like check fraud. We have been in contact with our customer to resolve this matter, and encourage you to check in with them for an update. As a general reminder to help keep safe from financial crime: BMO Harris will never contact you via unsolicited email, text or phone call asking for sensitive information, passwords or PINs. If you get a call, voicemail, email or text from someone claiming to be from BMO Harris and you think it's suspicious, contact us immediately using the information on the back of your card."

You can learn more about common scams, red flags to watch out for, and 10 tips on how to avoid financial crime on the BMO Harris website.

And here what Chase told us in various emails:

"A customer should always work with their bank directly. A customer can deposit a check in various ways, such as through the phone, at an ATM, or in-person. At Chase, we work with other banks when they contact us about a suspicious check. Our team checked into this and here's what they found:  We received a request from BMO Harris to review the situation. Following procedures for such claims, we reviewed the case yesterday. We also responded to BMO Harris yesterday."