How did you discover it was stolen? Or did the bank discover that? If so, I suppose the victim reported it stolen?
The victim was the one who reported it. Our tenant got ahold of the money order from another apartment complex's management office and whited out that complex's name and put ours in and resigned it with her name. She then gave it to us. We deposited it.
Couple of months later, the victim was getting notices from her apartment complex that she hadn't paid her rent. She knew she had, had kept the receipt, and filed a report with Western Union.
Today, I received a notice from our bank that the victim had signed an affidavit that she gave it to her apartment complex. Western Union had a report in there that they sent to our bank saying, "Give us back the money. This money order was altered." Our bank took the money out of our account and sent it back to Western Union who will send it to the victim and she can pay her rent.
In the meantime, our tenant has a court date on 1/16 anyway because she's way behind in her rent anyway. After I go file a report with the Sheriff's Dept. I imagine her court date will be very very interesting.
She passed off two other money orders as her own at the same time. They were also stolen, but we haven't heard from the victims in those cases and we aren't sure who they are or what apartment complex so we can't do anything about those yet.