IMAGINE HAVING YOUR BANK ACCOUNT FUNDS FRAUDULENTLY DEPLETED. PROTECT YOURSELF & YOUR BANK ACCT FROM CHECK FRAUD! CHECK FRAUD INVOLVES CHECKS BEING ‘FISHED’ OUT OF MAILBOXES, ‘WASHED’ THEN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT IS FRAUDULENTLY DEPLETED OF ALL FUNDS!

FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS FROM GREG LITSTER – WHO WAS A BANKER FOR 18-YEARS AND WORKED WITH FRANK ABAGNALE FOR CHECK AND BANK ACCOUNT SECURITY.

Talk to your financial institution about these services/products listed below to help prevent check fraud losses!

1. Positive Pay  (compares the account number, check number, and dollar amount of checks posting against your account against a list of the checks you issued.  Does NOT include the Payee Name)

2. Payee Positive Pay (includes the Payee Name to Positive Pay.  It is much better!!)  The UCC allows just 24 hours to return a counterfeit check.  Look at all of your bank accounts every day! ALWAYS LOOK at the check image of the big-dollar checks to make sure it is not a counterfeit check using the same check number and dollar amount of a check you legitimately issued.

3. ACH Filters & Blocks (to prevent unauthorized ACH debits from posting against your account. Be aware that you have 48 HOURS to report an unauthorized ACH debit on a business account to have it charged back.)

**THE ABOVE SERVICES YOUR FINANCIAL INSTITUTION SHOULD BE PROVIDING (DOUBLE CHECK WITH THEM) COMPARES: NAME OF PAYEE / CHECK NUMBER / DATE / AMOUNT AND IF THEY DON’T MATCH THE PRESENTED CHECK IS ‘RED FLAGGED’ AND NOT AUTOMATICALLY PAID!

*SERIOUSLY consider SAFEChecks for your business and personal checks! (800-755-2265)

*Buy cybercrime and check fraud insurance to cover you in the event of forgery and/or fraud.

Thieves are regularly ‘fishing’ checks out of mail boxes, or holding up USPS drivers at gunpoint to steal the “arrow key” that opens the blue boxes and standalone mail boxes, to steal and wash the checks!  This has gotten so bad that BANKS are recommending you take your mail inside the USPS Post Office!

THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS PROVIDED BY FRANK ABAGNALE (‘CATCH ME IF YOU CAN’), WHO CONSULTS FOR THE FBI ABOUT FRAUD.  Mr. Abagnale designed “SAFEChecks” – high-security checks that cannot be replicated, or chemically washed and altered without leaving permanent stains. #800-755-2265.

1. Secure Ordering Procedures:  Fraudsters cannot order our checks because of our Secure Ordering Procedures (which other check printers don’t not spend the money to do).  SAFEChecks verifies every new order with the company’s (or individual’s) bank.  (We also reconfirm/re-verify all reorders with a change of ship-to address – because we don’t know if the person reordering is an embezzling “trusted bookkeeper” ordering their employer’s checks to steal money).  We confirm that the name, the account number and the ship-to address on the order form that we receive matches the information the bank has on file.  That is the only way to protect our customers from fraudsters ordering checks that look like their own checks.  NO other check supplier has this kind of internal controls.  Only SAFEChecks.  Anybody, including fraudsters, can (and do) order checks from other check suppliers, then use those blank checks to create counterfeit checks and hit other companies’ accounts.  Since 1993, SAFEChecks has never had a check purchased by a fraudster and used to hit someone else’s bank account.  It has never happened.

Why it matters: In a bank’s Sight Review Department, where humans look at large-dollar inclearing checks being presented for payment, fraudsters cannot get our check stock, so the bank is able to differentiate our customers’ checks from counterfeit checks.  They are far better protected from counterfeit checks IF the bank knows what to look for, AND if it’s Sight Review dollar threshold is kept very low.

From Page 26 in Frank Abagnale’s Fraud Bulletin, Volume 17:  https://www.safechecks.com/fraud-education/the-fraud-bulletin.php

2. Chemical Check Washing: All of our checks are printed on Signature Paper, which SAFEChecks developed in 2022 with Frank Abagnale.  Signature Paper is the only check paper in North America that creates a permanent stain when soaked or touched with chemicals.  Other check printers’ checks will stain, but what they doesn’t tell anyone is, that if their checks are allowed to soak in acetone (the chemical used by fraudsters to wash checks) for 45 minutes, the “stain” they talk about in their marketing materials washes completely away.  Acetone does not damage the paper whatsoever.  SAFEChecks’ stain (Signature Paper) is permanent; it never washed away.

Watch these short videos about check washing and Signature Paper, and Supercheck and SuperBusinessCheck, designed by Frank Abagnale: 

1. (3 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTEg0ytCucI

2. (6 minutes, 3 videos)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTxVd3R-V34

3. Holograms: Holograms used to be useful 20 years ago, but are useless today.  Since Check 21 came into effect in 2004, where original paper checks are converted into digital images and processed electronically, holograms are worthless as a security feature.  Check printers’ Marketing Departments try to make potential customers think holograms add value so they can charge more money for a check with a hologram.  However, they are useless because the original hologram on the original paper check is never presented to the paying bank for payment.  If the original paper check was presented for payment, and a human could look at the image inside the actual hologram to verify its authenticity, holograms would be useful.  But, that is not how checks are processed today, and haven’t been for 20 years.  Virtually ALL check printers sell their checks with holograms to fraudsters, who use those fancy checks to steal money from someone!