Check fraud: An old nemesis stages a fierce comeback

This white paper, commissioned by Mitek Systems and produced by Datos Insights, explores the challenges of dealing with the resurgence in check fraud. It covers the recent increase in check fraud activity and explores how financial institutions (FIs) can address this challenging issue in an environment in which investment in related detection capabilities has been historically low. 

A few key findings in this report:

• Fraudsters have ramped up their exploitation of vulnerabilities in the check payment systems through the theft, washing, altering, and counterfeiting of checks, resulting in significant losses
• FIs must completely re-examine their control frameworks aimed at first- and third-party check fraud mitigation
• Fraudsters will continue to exploit check fraud, given the ease with which it can be committed 
• Continued evaluation, tuning, and refactoring of control frameworks are important to address changing risk environments as fraudsters focus their attention on the weakest points in an FI's fraud defenses