TIFU by trusting my bank to listen to me and protect my money from scammers

So this wasn’t actually today, but back in 2020 after I got married and had my first kid.

In the summer 2020 I was still in school and going into my senior year of college. I got married at the beginning of the year, and had my first kid a few weeks prior to this incident. I was working as a delivery driver and trying to find another stream of income. I decided to start tutoring online. I was getting my tutoring service off the ground and a man reached out to me to tutor his son over the course of a couple months. I asked for payment upfront and was being sent a specific type of check that’s meant to be coming from an education savings account. This pinged my scam radar to start being careful. I checked with my dad about the legitimacy of this type of check for starters, and he confirmed that they are rare but yes a real thing. This check was to the tune of $1600, so I knew I had to be careful.

Well the check finally comes in the mail and I deposit it into the bank. I start to plan the lessons for the first tutoring sessions, and then a few days later I get a message from the dad saying his son has covid and he needs to cancel all the sessions and get his money back. Since I was prepared for this outcome, I call my bank, we will call it LArvest. I get ahold of a representative, and explain my suspicions of the check possibly being fraudulent. I explain that I want the funds from the check withheld from my account until the check has 100% cleared. The rep confidently reassures me that, the money will not show up in my account until the check has fully cleared.

Over the course of the next 10 days, I am being pestered by the “dad” to send him back the money. I tell him that I am waiting for the check to clear and the money to be made available to provide the refund. Finally after about 2 weeks from when I deposited the check, I see the money in my account. I figure this means that this wasn’t a scam and there really is a poor kid that has covid and I send the money back to the “dad”. 2 days later there is an additional $1600 charge on my account. I call LArvest and they state: “Oh yeah, that check didn’t clear. The account it was from didn’t have sufficient funds.” No matter what I said, I was told that there was nothing they could do since the check was marked NSF. So I went and reported the charge as fraudulent and gave the investigator everything I knew including the information that I was told by the bank the money wouldn’t be deposited without the check clearing. Well the call recording “couldn’t be found” and I was left on the hook for the full $1600. I obviously no longer bank there and will advise anyone that will listen not to bank with LArvest.

TL;DR: Suspected tutoring client of attempting to scam me. I asked my bank to help me take precautionary measures to protect myself, and they said those measures were in place. Bank lied to me about said measures and end up costing me $1600.