[mindslight]

It seems like another illegal scam that will rake in a decade of ill gotten gains, then there will be a class action slap on the wrist and a promise not to do it again, while they move on to the next decade's scams. The entire nature of a check is that it is a promise that a third party custodian will pay a specific amount, and the custodian then demanding to take a cut directly invalidates that. I suspect it's monkey-see-monkey-do, unless there is some behind the scenes rule change (Check 21?) that would seem to condone such nonsense.