13-Year-Old's Check Empire

A story about how Moiz Ali's family ran a check cashing business at their gas stations when he was growing up.

"When we were growing up we owned gas stations, and we would cash checks for people as a service. If you brought in a check for $200 or $2,000 for the week, we would charge you a percentage and give you cash for it. We would take the check and deposit it to the bank.

By the end of our gas station careers, we were doing this at massive scale. One of our stores would cash $250,000 worth of checks on any given Friday. We'd have Wells Fargo coming over and giving us cash. We had these crazy situations like a bus full of Hispanic immigrants who were roofers would come to our store - the door would open and like 40 immigrants would come out to cash their checks with us.

Early on in our check cashing careers, this guy named FM Porter came in with a $2,000 business check. We charged 5% and gave him $1,900. When we tried to deposit the check, it bounced. We tracked him down and knocked on his door saying we were going to kill him or call the cops. He told us to relax - the check was made out to his business instead of him personally. It took 45 days to sort out, but eventually went through and we made $100.

I remember telling my brother it went through and he said 'That was the easiest $100 we've ever made.' But I thought it was the worst $100 we'd ever made - constantly being afraid checks would bounce. Though it ended up being super profitable - when you cash $250,000 of checks on a Friday, you're going to make $2,500 to $3,500 just for your business on that day alone."