New Cooperative Effort to Fight Mail Fraud
- A new cooperative effort to combat check fraud is announced
- An infographic provides a great overview
- Collaboration is the key to success
The American Bankers Association and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service have announced a cooperative effort to combat check fraud, kicking off the partnership with a rather extraordinary new infographic designed to educate consumers about what they can do to protect their mail and their checks -- download a full-sized PDF version here.
With mail theft on the rise, it's indeed a very good idea for the Post Office to leverage as many effective alliances as possible -- including the US Congress -- in their ongoing defense of parcels as well as increasing safety for their personnel, who have been assaulted by persons looking to procure checks and parcels.
The infographic covers the following topics:
- Check Washing & Check Theft Scams
- How to Protect Your Mail
- How to Protect Your Checks
- What to Do If You’re a Victim
Fighting Check Fraud: Collaborative Effort for Banks
It's great to see the ABA and USPIS working together to bring attention to check fraud and educating the public on how to protect themselves. We are also seeing financial institutions making similar efforts via their social media pages, distributing information on check fraud to protect their customers.
Click to enlarge the infographic
However, collaboration needs to occur across the industry, including financial institutions, vendors, and federal agencies. Collaboration comes in many forms. For example:
- Consortiums: Financial institutions participate to share data -- and, soon, check images -- to verify check payments and accounts
- Financial institutions working with vendors to improve technologies that will increase check fraud technology capabilities
- Financial institutions working with local authorities to report cases of check fraud to track down the perpetrators
No single entity can take on the challenge of check fraud. However, by collaborating with other financial institutions, working with vendors to improve technologies that provide more data to improve AI and machine learning systems like image forensic AI, and cooperating with federal agencies to track down the fraudsters, we can help the industry reduce the amount of check fraud and curb the trend.