Bank Fraud

If a bank gets robbed, it's newsworthy enough to get splashed all over the media. Yet even taking into account the occasional multi-million dollar heists, financial institutions lose more than ten fold that amount to individual frauds. The actual bank robberies are insured. The onesie-twosie bank fraud are not.

Check fraud costs over $800 million dollars annually, over twelve times the money stolen by bank robbers.

Some examples of bank fraud:

• Kiting - a bad check is deposited into one account from another account. Before the bad check has had time to be processed, another check is issued using the same account where the bad check was deposited. By the time the bank learns of the initial bad check deposit, the funds are gone (and so are the perpetrators).

• Falsifying Loan Applications

• "Booster Checks" - increasing your credit limit on your credit cards by utilizing "convenience checks" to double or triple the amount of the amount of the line of credit.

• Merchants can also assist the perpetrator of these schemes by charging a credit card without the benefit of providing merchandise. Retailers willing to do this get a kickback from the card holder.

• Double scans - Hand off your credit or debit card to a sales clerk, waiter, etc. who then scans your card a second time to read the magnetic stripe to create a duplicate card.

• Forged checks

• Forged signatures on checks

• Counterfeit checks

• Altered checks

Who pays? WE DO!