The fraudulent official check scam artists are trying new techniques to separate honest people from their money. One of the latest scams is cleverly designed to look like a check being sent directly to a financial institution by the FDIC, for deposit to a legitimate customer's account!
According to an FDIC May 1, 2007, alert (SA-112-2007), banks are receiving bogus letters that claim to be from the FDIC (but aren't), instructing the banks to credit official bank checks (which turn out to be counterfeit) to a customer's deposit account.
You should alert your mailroom and/or mail deposit staff to this scam, and instruct them --
- Not to deposit the checks to anyone's account.
- To deliver the entire mailing (envelope, instructions and checks) to your security department for further handling.
Because this scam reveals that a depositor's account information is probably in the wrong hands, you should advise your customer of the problem, and strongly suggest that affected accounts be closed out and new accounts be opened.
Internet Fraud Still Rising
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) recently released their 2006 Internet Crime Report. The IC3 receives complaints online and by telephone. They refer them to the appropriate law enforcement agency. Here are highlights of the report:
1. Complaints received on the IC3 website - 207,492 (While this is a 10% decline from 2005, dollars involved in the claims rose.)
2. Complaints by category:
Auction Fraud - 44.9%
Non-delivery - 19.0%
Check fraud - 4.9%
Credit/Debit card fraud - 4.8%
Computer fraud - 2.8%
Confidence fraud - 2.2%
Financial institution fraud - 1.6%
Identity theft - 1.6%
Investment fraud - 1.3%
Child pornography - 1.0%
3. Total dollars lost in fraud cases for 2006, $198.44 million. This is an increase over 2005 by 8.37%.
4. The mean dollar loss was $2,529.90 and the median was $724.00.
5. Referrals by Amount of Dollars Lost:
$.01 to $99.99 - 15.6%
$100 -$999.99 - 39.4%
$1,000 - $4,999.99 - 31.6%
$5,000 - $9,999.99 - 7.6%
$10,000 - $99,999.99 - 4.7%
$100,000+ - 1.0%
6. Amount lost by category:
Complaint Type
Median $ Loss per Complaint
% of Reported Total Dollar Loss
Nigerian letter fraud
$5,100
1.7%
Check fraud
$3,744
11.1%
Investment fraud
$$2,694.99
4.0%
Confidence fraud
$2,400
4.5%
Auction fraud
$602
33.0%
Non-delivery
$585
28.1%
Credit/Debit card fraud
$427
3.6%
7. Over half of the perpetrators resided in one of these states, ranked from the highest to lowest:
a. California - 15.2%
b. New York - 9.5%
c. Florida - 9.3%
d. Texas - 6.5%
e. Illinois - 4.5%
f. Pennsylvania - 3.3%
g. Tennessee - 3.2%
h. North Carolina - 3.1%
i. Ohio - 3.1%
j. New Jersey - 3.0%
and the United States contained 60% of the perpetrators, as you can see by the country of origin ranking:
k. United States - 60.9%
l. United Kingdom - 15.9%
m. Nigeria - 5.9%
n. Canada - 5.6%
o. Romania - 1.6%
p. Italy - 1.2%
q. Netherlands - 1.2%
r. Russia - 1.1%
s. Germany - 0.7%
t. South Africa - 0.6%
8. Losses by Age of Complainant Demographics (Average (median) $ Loss per Typical Complaint_
Male - $920
Female - $545
Age - Median Loss
<20 - $500
20-29 - $702
30-39 - $786
40-49 - $827
50-59 - $860
60+ - $866
9. Top 10 states where complaints originated from:
a. California - 13.5%
b. Texas - 7.2%
c. Florida - 7.1%
4. New York - 5.5%
d. Pennsylvania - 4.0%
e. New Jersey - 3.6%
f. Illinois - 3.5%
g. Ohio - 3.3%
h. Virginia - 3.0%
i. Michigan - 2.9%
10. While email was the most common method scammers used to contact their victims, there are others to watch for:
Email - 73.9%
Webpage - 36.0%
Telephone - 17.7%
IM - 12.0%
Snail mail - 10.3%
Wire - 6.3%
Fax - 4.0%
Bulletin board - 3.7%
Chatrooms - 2.4%
In person - 1.5%
Newsgroups - 0.6%
The complete report is available here.
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