§ 8.01-391.1.Substitute checks as evidence (Supreme Court Rule 2:1003 derived from subsections A and B of this section).

Banks stopped physically shuttling paper checks across the country years ago. The federal Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act — commonly called the Check 21 Act, codified at 12 U.S.C. § 5001 and following — made that possible by authorizing banks to create a “substitute check”: a paper reproduction of the front and back of an original check that functions as its legal equivalent for virtually every purpose, so banks could process check images electronically instead of moving paper originals from bank to bank. Section 8.01-391.1 is Virginia’s evidentiary counterpart to that federal framework, making sure Virginia courts treat a substitute check exactly like the original it replaced. Note that the federal statute’s own name does not include the word “Evidence” — Virginia’s own codification inserts it anyway, not just in the title of this article, Article 2.1, “Check Clearing for the 21st Century Evidence Act,” but in subsection A’s own operative text, which names “the federal Check Clearing for the 21st Century Evidence Act (Check 21 Act)” as the law it implements. The federal statute Congress enacted, Pub. L. 108-100, carries no “Evidence” in its own title.

Under this section, a substitute check created under the federal Act is admissible in any legal proceeding in Virginia, civil or criminal, to the same extent the original check would have been. A party does not need to explain or prove the federal mechanics behind check truncation each time a substitute check comes up in a case — the document steps into the original’s evidentiary shoes.

The section also builds in a shortcut for identifying a substitute check. A document from a banking institution labeled a “substitute check” that carries the legend “This is a legal copy of your check. You can use it the same way you would use the original check” is presumed to be a substitute check created under the Check 21 Act, without a party having to independently establish that origin.

Because a substitute check functions as a negotiable instrument in its own right, the section closes with a criminal backstop: anyone who forges a substitute check, or utters or attempts to pass off a forged one as genuine, faces punishment under Virginia’s general forgery statute, § 18.2-172.