Section One: Reading Skills

Section One: Reading Skills

After carefully reading the text below, choose the correct alternatives

in accordance with the text's contents.

Bank cheques have been known to bounce. But disintegrate?

Several banks, including at least two in Illinois and one in Tennessee

have unwittingly accepted cheques coated with a chemical that made

them begin to deteriorate within hours after being deposited. In a few

days they were little more than confetti. One or more unidentified

scam artists have passed at least fourteen such cheques, cheating the

banks out of some seventy thousand dollars.

In one case a customer, apparently using a fictitious name,

opened an account at Chicago's Northern Trust Bank and later

deposited a $ 4,000 cheque drawn on an out-of-state bank. The

customer couldn't withdraw the funds immediately because Northern

Trust, like most banks, puts a hold on such a deposit for several days

to see if the cheque will be returned for lack of funds. When the

culprit came back in nine days the cheque had not been returned, so

the bank allowed a $ 4,000 withdrawal to be made. In this case,

though the cheque had not been returned because it had apparented

disintegrated in transit. By the time the bank officials figured out what

had happened, the trick-cheque passer was nowhere to be found, and

Northern Trust was out of $4.000. If the police know what chemical is

being used to coat the cheques, they are not saying, probably for fear

of inspiring copycat cheque cashers. Says Chicago Police Captain

James Zurawski, who is investigating the case: "It's like something out

of a James Bond film".

01. The special substance referred to in the text has the property of

a) covering the cheque with a protective coat.

b) eliminating the possibility of tampering with the cheque.

c) reducing the cheque into tiny bits.

d) erasing the handwriting on the cheque.

e) enabling one to remove any possible errors.