Concord Program Tracks Down Terrorists

F ollowing the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 and using personal information supplied by the FBI, Concord EFS's Identity Chek program - a system designed to analyze new bank or other account applications - identified 13 of the 19 known terrorists.

Financial institutions across the country soon will have to comply with federal legislation enacted recently to fight international money laundering and block terrorist access to the United States' financial system. Concord's nationwide compliance program will help financial institutions fulfill provisions of the act pertaining to identification verification during the processing of new accounts.

President Bush signed the USA Patriot Act (USAPA) into law on Oct. 29, 2001. The bill is scheduled to become effective Oct. 25, 2002. The USAPA is a complex piece of legislation with a wide scope aimed at deterring and punishing terrorist acts in the U.S. and around the world.

Its 342 pages include provisions to increase the capability of electronic surveillance by the FBI, remove obstacles for investigating terrorism and strengthen criminal laws against terrorists, and provide for victims of terrorists, public safety officers and their families.

Identity Chek is offered through Primary Payment Systems Inc., a subsidiary of Concord, providing risk-management solutions to the financial services industry. Section 326 of the USAPA addresses the creation of minimum requirements for verifying the ID of a customer opening a new account. Identity Chek is an "intelligent" computer software system accessing multiple databases to pick out suspicious information used to open the accounts.

Identity Chek is part of Primary Payment Systems' Early Warning software suite and will contribute to a repository of information on accounts, transactions and people. The system is used by large U.S. financial institutions.

In hundreds of tests on more than 27 million new account openings in the last 12 months, the system found invalid, inconsistent and unusual elements in potential customers' identification information. Identity Chek combines and analyzes data, enabling it to identify suspicious individuals and potential fraud rings. The system also may prove helpful in locating terrorist cells.