SearchFinancialSecurity.com – FraudNet addresses the growing problem of existing account fraud, said James Van Dyke, president and founder of Javelin Strategy & Research, which focuses on the financial-services market. Of the 8.1 million identity fraud victims last year, two-thirds involved cases of existing account fraud, according to a study released earlier this year by Javelin. And while overall identity fraud dropped last year, fraud to existing bank accounts went up 10 percent, the study showed.

“Someone gets your information in an account you opened legitimately and they start committing fraud in that account,” Van Dyke said. “They take over your account credentials and can set up bogus payees, start paying bills in your name, overpay, and ask for a refund for the overpayment.”

FraudNet works by aggregating fraud data from the 462 financial institutions using it, he said. That shared data allows institutions to spot potential fraud, such as overpayments with the same amount after the decimal point. “As a result [of the network effect], they’re more likely to snare a criminal,” he said.

Pask said PSCU-FS has noticed trends among fraudsters: “We can identify by the way the fraud is perpetrated, that it’s coming from a particular person or group.”

For example, some fraudsters use the same types of email addresses, and one in particular always adds three payment accounts and tries to evade fraud detection by making the same payment amount under a certain threshold. Some criminals come back repeatedly at different times of the day, and try various payment amounts and cities to receive payment. PSCU-FS blocks them each time.

“When we catch them, our agents get excited,” Pask says. “They say, ‘I got another one and shut them down’.” Read Full Article