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March 2026 • Issue 26:03:02

The evolution of check

acceptance, and fraud

check fraud is no longer committed by lone wolves. "Now
it's being done by organized check interception rings,"
Schwabline added.

Criminals are raiding the blue boxes the U.S. Postal Service
has placed strategically throughout towns and cities,
capturing the information from checks they find to produce
counterfeits and/or sell the information on the dark web,
enabling organized rings to conduct large-scale forgery,
alteration and counterfeit schemes.
Check fraud by the numbers

FinCEN said that during a six-month review period in
2023, it received 15,417 Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) reports (also
known as Suspicious Activity Reports) from 841 financial
institutions related to mail-theft check fraud, totaling more
than $688 million in suspicious activity. To put this into
perspective, The Green Sheet reported in 2002 that surveys
By Patti Murphy suggested $850 million in bad checks were being written

hecks are alive and well and continue to grease annually in the United States.
the wheels of commerce, something businesses
and fraudsters alike understand. Precise num- The findings underscore the growing scale of the problem.
C bers are hard to pin down, as there is no central “The analysis demonstrates the severity of mail theft-
repository tracking check fraud. Still, the Financial Crimes related check fraud and why fraud is a high priority, while
Enforcement Network (FinCEN) warned in a February 2023 also highlighting the important role financial institutions
alert of a “nationwide surge,” and industry stakeholders play in reporting information pursuant to the Bank Secrecy
consistently describe check fraud as a growing threat. Act to assist in bringing fraudsters to justice,” Chief Postal
Inspector Gary Barksdale said in a 2023 statement.
"AI [artificial intelligence] is making it easier to do fraud,"
said Travis Powers, vice president for partner relations at
CrossCheck, a California-based company specializing in Contributed articles inside by:
check verification, guarantee and conversion. "Anything AI
can do to benefit you, fraudsters can do to trick you."
Allen Kopelman .....................................................................................16
Jason Schwabline, chief commercial officer at CheckAlt,
which provides integrated receivables services to financial Steven Peisner .......................................................................................24
institutions and businesses, said throttled investment Elie Y. Katz ...............................................................................................27
by FIs and their business clients in fraud prevention has
contributed to a rise in check fraud. Viktoria Soltesz ......................................................................................28
Ken Musante ..........................................................................................31
"No one really invested in this space because they thought
it [check writing] was going away," he said. What's more,

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