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The reason for the expansion of the stolen check fraud market is the ease of selling and buying them on black markets. This opinion is contained in an article by The New York Times, the author of which installed the Telegram messenger and quickly found specialized communities there where you can buy a pack of such checks in a few minutes.
“Last week I downloaded Telegram, an app where fraudulent activity is particularly common, and quickly found forums where stolen checks were being sold. I called the people who wrote the first 20 checks in the package and asked if they knew they were victims of criminals. They were not happy with this turn,” stated columnist Ron Lieber.
During the first year of the pandemic, the Postal Service received nearly 300,000 mail theft complaints, up 161 percent from the previous year, according to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Financial institutions also reported triple-digit growth.
Lieber also found that after actually stealing checks, robbers take one of several routes. In particular, they can store them or sell them on Telegram. In most cases, the next step is to use a fake ID to open a bank account where the check will eventually go. Many criminals wash the ink off the stolen form and transfer it to their new identity, cash it into the account, withdraw the money, and then forget about the account. Socure, a company that sells digital identity verification services to banks, says it estimates there could be as many as 2.5 million accounts with synthetic identities “waiting for nefarious deals” worldwide.
After calling several fraud victims, Lieber also concluded that mail theft is not the only way criminals obtain checks. Some of them, apparently, use the services of insiders - employees of postal services and even banks.
“Last week I downloaded Telegram, an app where fraudulent activity is particularly common, and quickly found forums where stolen checks were being sold. I called the people who wrote the first 20 checks in the package and asked if they knew they were victims of criminals. They were not happy with this turn,” stated columnist Ron Lieber.
During the first year of the pandemic, the Postal Service received nearly 300,000 mail theft complaints, up 161 percent from the previous year, according to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Financial institutions also reported triple-digit growth.
Lieber also found that after actually stealing checks, robbers take one of several routes. In particular, they can store them or sell them on Telegram. In most cases, the next step is to use a fake ID to open a bank account where the check will eventually go. Many criminals wash the ink off the stolen form and transfer it to their new identity, cash it into the account, withdraw the money, and then forget about the account. Socure, a company that sells digital identity verification services to banks, says it estimates there could be as many as 2.5 million accounts with synthetic identities “waiting for nefarious deals” worldwide.
After calling several fraud victims, Lieber also concluded that mail theft is not the only way criminals obtain checks. Some of them, apparently, use the services of insiders - employees of postal services and even banks.
