Re: Would they ever...
Just for future reference: the bank was in deep legal/regulatory shit for paying that amount into the wrong account. Even if the cheque was uncrossed, unless Leccy man physically walked it down to the bank and cashed it then deposited that cash, that cheque may not be paid to a third party (must be the legal payee to sign over to another payee).
So your restitution route is to loudly and angrily hammer the table in the _bank_, and threaten to go straight to the regulator. They'd be done like a dinner so they'd jump. And they would be expected by the regulator to _immediately_ make good your account and to retrieve the incorrect money in their own time. And they know that so they'd do that. This would have allowed you to immediately rewrite&send the correct mortgage cheque, avoiding penalty.
Oh well. "Next time..."
By the bye: that route is also a standard scam tool, if selling on eBay or whatever. They pay, you send the item, then when they receive it they simply contact PayPal or credit card company or whatever and protest the charge. PayPal/CCco/whoever _immediately_ reverses/retrieves the payment from your account, leaving the scammer with both their money and your item
Biting the hand that feeds IT
