Actually I did that before with some guy who bounced a check on me when I wassellinga car. I forget what I was selling it for but he seemed legit and we did have bill of sale and title and shit so it was documented. The car was basically fucked and not running, old ass POS VW, so I was selling it more as scrap in the hundreds of dollars range. Supposedly dude restored cars with disadvantaged kids as the labor to teach them to work on automobiles. Said he was going to get me pics in the long run when it was restored. Never found out if he was making that shit up or what.
I spent weeks on the phone with this dude and his wife getting the run around that they would pay me next week and shit. I'm like WTF I've got our bill of sale, title was transferred with a money amount and I have a cancelled check from your fucked ass account. Eventually our phone calls have me yelling at him and shit.
Finally got a local cop to get on the phone with his ass and talk about what sorts of charges he might consider if we couldn't work shit out. Next thing you know he's calling me up like "wow, you didn't have to go do all that"....and of course he get's me the money next week for real this time. He wasn't so nice at that meeting, but I had stopped being nice already.
So, yeah, I wouldn't take a check again even if the guy seemed responsible and it wasn't for a lot and the check looked ok with high number etc. Shouldn't have anyway, but the guy didn't set off any alarms so I was nice to him at my own detriment.
Trying to remember now if I looked at ID or what, because it never really turned out to be a stolen check (which I think I would have considered and checked ID and shit) or not him in general. This was a good long time ago now and I was pretty young, so learning experience overall.