XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.fraud, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: thank@democrats.org   
      
   NEW YORK (AP) — Check fraud is back in a big way, fueled by a rise in   
   organized crime that is forcing small businesses and individuals to take   
   additional safety measures or to avoid sending checks through the mail   
   altogether.   
      
   Banks issued roughly 680,000 reports of check fraud to the Financial   
   Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN, last year. That’s up   
   from 350,000 reports in 2021. Meanwhile the U.S. Postal Inspection Service   
   reported roughly 300,000 complaints of mail theft in 2021, more than   
   double the prior year’s total.   
      
   Early in the pandemic, government relief checks became an attractive   
   target for criminals. The problem has only gotten worse and postal   
   authorities and bank officials are warning Americans to avoid mailing   
   checks if possible, or at least to use a secure mail drop such as inside   
   the post office. Meanwhile, as the cases of fraud increase, victims are   
   waiting longer to recover their stolen money.   
      
   Check usage has been in decline for decades as Americans have largely   
   switched to paying for their services with credit and debit cards.   
   Americans wrote roughly 3.4 billion checks in 2022, down from nearly 19   
   billion checks in 1990, according to the Federal Reserve. However, the   
   average size of the checks Americans write rose from $673 in 1990 — or   
   $1,602 in today’s dollars — to $2,652 last year.   
      
   “Despite the declining use of checks in the United States, criminals have   
   been increasingly targeting the U.S. Mail since the COVID-19 pandemic to   
   commit check fraud,” FinCEN wrote in an alert sent out in February.   
      
   Checks are still frequently used by small businesses. Eric Fischgrund, who   
   runs FischTank PR, a 30-person public relations firm in New York, had   
   about 15 checks that were being mailed to him from clients stolen after   
   they all went through the same Postal Service distribution center. Ten of   
   them were successfully cashed by criminals.   
      
   The checks were stolen in March and Fischgrund became aware of the problem   
   in April, when several of his clients who were never late missed payments.   
   The Postal Service investigated and Fischgrund has recovered about 70% of   
   the revenue, but some of the cases haven’t yet been resolved.   
      
   According to the investigator on the case, the perpetrators used   
   technology that melted ink in the “to” field of the checks so they could   
   write in fake names. FischTank instructed all its clients to change their   
   paper format because it was dealing with a check fraud issue.   
      
   Fischgrund said he’d never previously had an issue with check fraud in the   
   nearly 10 years he has run his own business. Now he has a clause in   
   invoices and new client contracts that asks for electronic payments only.   
      
   “I don’t think we’ll ever go back to asking for checks as an option,” he   
   said.   
      
   Today’s check fraud criminals are not small operations, or lone   
   individuals like the Leonardo DiCaprio character in the 2002 movie “Catch   
   Me If You Can,” counterfeiting checks from his hotel room and apartment.   
   They are sophisticated criminal operations, with participants infiltrating   
   post office distribution centers, setting up fake businesses or creating   
   fake IDs to deposit the checks. “Walkers,” or people who actually walk in   
   to cash these checks, receive training in how to appear even more   
   legitimate.   
      
   In one case in Southern California last year, nearly sixty people were   
   arrested on charges of committing more than $5 million in check fraud   
   against 750 people.   
      
   Criminals are getting the checks or identification information by fishing   
   mail out of U.S. postal boxes, looking for envelopes that appear to be   
   either bill payments or checks being mailed.   
      
   The most common type of check fraud is what’s known as check washing,   
   where a criminal steals the check from the mail and proceeds to change the   
   payee’s name on the check and, additionally, the amount of money.   
      
   Some criminals are going further and using the information found on a   
   check to gather sensitive personal data on a potential victim. There have   
   been reports of criminals creating fake entities out of personal data   
   obtained from a check, or even opening new lines of credit or businesses   
   with that data as well. This allows fraudsters to create new checks using   
   old account data.   
      
   That’s why check fraud experts are saying Americans should avoid sending   
      
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