Mover steals from me, what's my play? (Very long, with cliff's notes)

[Hopey]

(Cliff's notes at bottom)

About a month and half ago, my wife and were preparing to move from our townhome into our new single family home. I thought about renting a truck and having my friends help us move, but decided against it and decided to hire movers instead. We had a few really heavy pieces of furniture (such as a piano), and I had doubts that my friends would be able to move these things without damaging them.

The sales guy for the moving company came to our house and gave me a quote for our move. He also mentioned two things: that the movers would be bonded (ie. not criminals), and that we could leave the drawers in our furniture full rather than emptying them out. The quote was for $1000 for a full-day move.

We decided to go with this moving company because they are one of the largest in Canada, and I believed that I was more likely to be dealing with "professionals" in dealing with them.

The day of the move rolled around the moving truck arrived at 8:00AM. There were three movers: two older guys, and one much younger guy. The two older guys were professionals, the younger guy complained the whole time. He also seemed to really "rough around the edges" -- he was the type of guy who'd be looking to fight you if you accidentally bumped into him in a bar, for instance. He also spent a good deal of time loudly telling the other two movers all of the different ways that he was going to [censored] his girlfriend that night. He was a real charmer.

At one point, one of the older movers apologized to me for the younger guy's behaviour. He told me that the younger guy was just a "fill-in" who only works when they need an extra hand. I told him not to worry about it, that I was happy as long as the work got done.

They packed up the truck at one location, and unloaded it at the other. In the interim, they badly damaged a wall in the old home, but I told them that I would fix it as I had some putty and leftover paint. They also damaged a couple of pieces of furniture, but I let it slide as I was thinking of replacing this furniture anyway. At the end of the day, I tipped each mover $40. I did this despite not being completely happy with their work, but wanting to be a nice guy as, having worked as a mover in College, I know what a terrible job they have. I'm also a bit of a pushover, obviously.

A little over a week later I received a call from the police. They asked me if I had used "AMJ Campbell" as my moving company in the last month. I told them I had. The detective asked me if I had noticed anything missing. I told him that I had not, but that we hadn't completely unpacked yet. The detective then asked me if I had written out a cheque for "$1500.89" recently. I told him that I definitely had not done so. The detective then informed me that he had a copy of one of my cheques cashed at Money Mart for that amount. He also told me that he was investigating a few other instances of this mover stealing from customers, and would probably be making an arrest in a few days. He asked me to get back to him once I contacted my bank to verify that the cheque had been cashed.

I immediately looked at my accoun through online banking, and sure enough, that amount had been withdrawn from my account 2 days earlier. My online account allows me to view scanned copies of cheques that had been cashed, and when I looked at the cheque, it was obvious that the signature had been forged.

I left work and went to my bank to report the fraudulent activity. The bank compared the signature on the cheque to the signature they had on file, and confirmed that the signatures did not match. They told me that they'd launch an investigation, and that I should get my money back within a few days. The money was back in my account by the weekend.

I went home and found the chequebook that he had torn the cheque from. It was still in my nightstand (and yes, I'm an idiot for not having removed the chequebook before the move, but I had forgotten that it was there), and the rest of the cheques were still there. He had ripped a cheque from the middle of my chequebook so that I would not notice that it was missing until well after he had cashed it.

I called the company's national office to complain about this. I talked to someone in customer service, and she told me that they would contact the local office and would get back to me. It's been a week and I still haven't heard back from them. I emailed the local office last night to let them know how pissed off I am about the whole situation (I would have called them, but it was after business hours).

The detective also called me last night to let me know that they had arrested the guy, and that he had confessed to the thefts -- including the theft of my cheque. So there's no chance that somebody else took the cheque rather than the mover.

If and when the moving company gets back to me, what should I demand as compensation? I paid $1000 for the move. Some of my friends think I should get back all of it, as this mover was obviously not bonded (which was part of the "guarantee" that I was given from the moving company). I think that I should get back 1/2.

What does OOT think?

Cliff's notes: A mover stole a cheque from my nightstand, wrote himself a cheque for $1500, and cashed it at Money Mart. The bank refunded me the money, the thief has been arrested and confessed, but now I believe that the moving company owes me compensation. What do you believe I'm owed?