Modernizing Omnichannel Check Fraud Detection

Simply put, check washing means you procure a check or checks by whatever means necessary, remove the amount and “pay to” information (the “washing”), and alter it to serve your own nefarious purposes. No chart needed. Not even a printer.

PaymentsJournal.com relays the news that, since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, a LIMRA survey shows 40% of financial services firms have seen an increase in fraudulent activity. This has lead notable banks and even the FBI to actually issue fraud alerts to their communities. Current stay at home orders have led more and more people to — wisely, in light of safety issues —  do their banking digitally via apps and chatbots, making technology the primary barrier to fraudulent activity.

Karen Olson, Treasury Management Banking Officer and Vice President at Dubuque Bank and Trust, notes at TelegraphHerald.com that COVID-19 has forced many businesses to quickly change their methods of operation — and, as a result, created additional avenues for payments fraud to occur.

Helpnetsecurity.com, quoting an Abnormal Security report, explains that there seems to be a peaking and plateauing of COVID-19-themed email attacks, an increase in BEC (Business Email Compromise) attack volume, and acceleration of payment and invoice fraud. Most of these scams rely upon impersonating a known company or brand. The report also uncovered changing trends in these brand impersonation attacks, a form of fraud where a bad actor assumes the identity of a trusted or known entity. Will it surprise you to learn, given the current remote meeting trends, that ZOOM (NASDAQ: ZM) became the most impersonated brand in Q2?

If you’ve been following the news, you’ve heard warnings about COVID-19 infection spikes as a result of seasonal and behavioral factors. Another unfortunate spike related to the pandemic is check fraud.

We’ve discussed at length the ways in which Image Analysis is a crucial tool in preventing and detecting check fraud. For instance, image analysis is deployed to “see the attributes of an image” and compare that to previously cleared checks for match purposes.

As we continue to explore the check fraud trends in 2020, an OrboGraph/Alogent collaboration brings this exciting webinar: The Future is Now: Industry Insights and the Role of Data to Mitigate Check Fraud and Modernize Deposits. In this unique webinar/streaming session, hosted on Thursday, October 22, 2020 from 2:00 – 3:00 PM EST, we will discuss…

The ABA Deposit Fraud Account Fraud Survey is the “official” industry benchmark when it comes to fraud trends and losses for banks and financial institutions. The latest version, released on January 1, 2020, is labeled as the 2019 report. The survey provided great depth and illustrated that fraudsters “went a little crazy” from 2016 to…