‘No one has ever done anything this audacious before’: Lawyer had his checkbook stolen by moving company, and now they’re trying to out-lawyer him

Moving is stressful enough without your moving company stealing your checkbook and writing or “kiting” bad checks. According to a series of Michael Foote TikTok posts, that’s exactly what happened to him. But little did the guilty parties know that Foote was a criminal defense lawyer who knew just what to do to solve the case.

” … [T]his was done in such a way that it is so easily traceable,” Foote said in the first two posts about what happened. “Agatha Christie can take the day off,” he continued. (Foote still writes checks, and he name-drops an old-timey mystery writer? How adorable.)

Meanwhile, Foote said he already knew who did it and admitted that while it wasn’t the wisest choice to leave his checkbooks out and ask the movers to move them, the best part was, “I’m literally moving across the street.”

Shakira enters the chat

Attorney Michael Foote’s first post about having his checkbook stolen by the moving company gave tantalizingly few details about what happened, or how he found out his checkbooks were missing. As LarryBoy mentioned in the comments, “I’m here for the tea! ☕️We ride at dawn!” And “We need a full play-by-play of how this progresses! I love a good storytime,” another comment added.

A few days after his first post, Foote obliged, saying he was in contact with a woman named “Shakira” from the moving company. “Her hips don’t lie, but her mouth sure does,” Foote said. Shakira denied anyone at the moving company would steal his checkbook and write bad checks. But what the accused perps did was write checks made out to themselves from Foote’s checkbook, according to the attorney. When a check like that gets deposited in an ATM, the bank fronts a certain amount before the check clears.

According to Foote, the moving company employees who stole his checkbook did just that at several Bronx bodegas. Here’s the clincher: Each check was made out to the person who wrote it rather than cash, providing the name of the moving person who stole the money, making it an open-and-shut case from the start.

“We’re in negotiation for a settlement,” Foote explained, adding at some point, he’ll likely have to sign an NDA with the movers. And how much will his payout be? Likely his time spent solving the issue charged at his hourly rate as an attorney, he said.

“We have entered our HR era”

But when it seemed like Michael Foote had the moving company on its heels, Foote posted another update, including an email telling him that his case had become an “HR issue.” According to Foote, HR said no one at their business would ever possibly do something like steal a customer’s checkbook and write bad checks, that they’d all been working there for years, and that no one had ever filed a complaint like Foote’s before. “It does feel fantastic to be the first,” Foote said.

As a savvy attorney, Foote sniffed out the HR strategy right away. He told his followers that what HR said was exactly what they would say if someone were guilty. “This is the exact argument I would use in court,” Foote said.

Foote has the names of all the movers working that day, he continued, but one small wrinkle arose because the person who wrote the bad checks was not on the list. Remember: Whoever did it made the bad checks out to themselves. Undeterred, Foote said he did some social media sleuthing and connected the name on the checks with a mover there that day through their mutuals.

“I spent my entire career making sure people don’t get in trouble for things they ‘done did,'” Foote added. Should he let the HR department know that the culprit is one of their employee’s friend’s list? To date, that question has not yet been answered but if following Foote’s checkbook drama has taught us, this story is likely far from over.