Defense against financial losses is as simple as asking for proper identification
By RYAN LANCASTER
Staff Reporter
An estimated $2.5 million is lost to fraud in the Spokane area every month, according to Craig Brenden, security and fraud prevention officer for the Spokane Teachers Credit Union.
Brenden, who spoke on fraud prevention for small businesses during a West Plains Chamber of Commerce breakfast Thursday, March 4, was senior fraud detective with the Spokane Police Department for the last 12 of his 22 years before retiring from the force.
He said STCU blocked $750,000 from being fraudulently taken last year, $1.1 million the year before. “If you figure there are roughly 29 financial institutions in the city of Spokane and they all have multiple branches, can you picture the amount of loss taken due to fraud?” Brenden said.
Much of this could be avoided if businesses took simple steps to protect themselves and their customers. “Even after all my years as a detective and my work at STCU I can tell you it all comes back to the merchant,” he said.
The first line of defense is fairly evident: asking for identification before accepting credit/debit cards and checks. “If you ask for ID and actually look at the ID, chances are if the person is there with the intent to defraud you, they're not going to do it,” he said, adding that those customers who may have been offended when asked for ID a few years ago have since learned that it is for their own protection.
Checking ID is vital because criminals have become so adept at producing false checks, sometimes Brenden can't even tell a fake from the real thing. “It's going to go through the whole Federal Reserve System and by the time it comes back we find out it's not good and you've just lost seven days, no chance of recovery and you take a loss.”
An inexpensive inkless pad near the register provides an added defense, as most criminals will think twice before passing a check stamped with their fingerprint. Police departments typically only investigate about one out of 20 cases of fraud, but Brenden said they are more inclined to look into bad checks that have been fingerprinted, as forensics have become so advanced that it is now possible to identify the prints of up to 17 different people overlaid on a single document.
In regards to cash, Brenden warned that lately there has been an influx of counterfeit $100 bills in the area that the Secret Service is currently investigating. Currency carries many different security features, some of which can be identified by touch or sight and others that require special equipment. A black light, for instance, can illuminate hard-to-see security strips while a special pen can detect starch – an indicator that the bill is made of paper and not linen. But Brenden cautioned that there are now 29 different chemicals that can be used to make detection pens unresponsive to counterfeit bills, rendering them fairly unreliable.
“Unfortunately, when we arrest people for doing bad things we send them to the university of jail and they learn how to do bad things better,” he said. “Everybody who goes to jail tells everybody else what they did wrong that caused them to get in there and then somebody tells them how to do it right the next time.”
Brenden said that despite the evolving nature of fraud, a little foresight and common sense on the part of businesses can go a long way. “As a police detective and as a bank investigator, it's not rocket science,” he said. “If you take a look at your situation and take the time and effort you'll stop the fraud.”
Ryan Lancaster can be reached at [email protected].
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