<prompt> Human: So today my account got drained of all its money and mothers acct this afternoon. My sister has a joint account with my mother and I, we have our own savings checkings but can easily deposit money each others accounts. So she has a negative balance of a couple thousand and my mothers and I checking and savings are at zero. I find out the hard way from trying to gas up in the middle of no where and there is no money in my account anymore. My mother goes up to the bank to see what the deal is. Comes to find out that my sister was given a fraud 3,000 check from her baby daddys mom to buy him a new car. My sisters bf does not have a bank account so she endorsed it and cashed it a couple weeks ago. My brother comes to the rescue and bails out my sister out of her negative balance to zero and gives 100 to get gas to get home. So now the bank is investigating the fraud check and may close all our accounts. My mother thought it would be a a good idea to NOT tell my sister, her bf, and her bfs mom, that the check was a fraud and they could be looking at getting charged with something. That instead the check just bounced. She fears it could scare them away and we will never get back our 3k. I on the other hand want to lawyer up and go after them asap. But this is family. I honestly think my sister and her bf are too dumb to make a fraud check. They are asking the mother who wrote the fraud check to just give them 3k cash instead now. What should we do? I only lost a couple hundred, while my mother lost a vital 600 house payment and my brother lost a bunch of college money he has saved up for this semester. I am also going change all my direct deposits to go to another bank I have now.Edit: sorry, she used the full 3k to buy a car. So the money is gone.Edit: Hey Thanks Reddit for yalls input. It seems like a joint account was never a good idea. I just had no idea about the bank and what their powers were when it came to this matter and just trusted my family. This was Bank of America btw. And yes, everyone in this situation are very poor. So now after reading a bunch of comments. I believe suing would not be a smart choice.  <response>: You need to save your mom from getting in some deep shit because of your sister. You need to make sure your and your moms accounts are separated from your sisters. This is a behaviour that wont get better or scared straight. Protect yourselves! Give your sister an allowance if you have to but for the love of all that you hold holy, sever that money tie. 