The nation’s banks stopped $22.3 billion in fraudulent transactions in 2018—almost $9 out of every $10 of attempted fraud—according to the American Bankers Association’s 2019 Deposit Account Fraud Survey Report released today. Attempted fraud against bank deposit accounts totaled $25.1 billion in 2018.
The survey—which sampled 151 institutions of varying size—found that check fraud accounted for 47% of deposit account fraud losses. “Sometimes, what’s old is new again as we’ve seen criminals gravitate back toward check fraud,” said ABA SVP Paul Benda. Leading types of check fraud included counterfeit checks, forged signatures and returned deposited items. Total attempted check fraud increased to $15.1 billion, and banks’ prevention measures stopped $13.8 billion—or 91%—of attempted check fraud.
Meanwhile, debit card fraud losses accounted for 44% of all fraud losses, and the remaining 9% was attributed to electronic banking transactions such as bill pay, P2P transfers, wire and ACH transactions. Looking ahead, survey respondents flagged debit card, online banking, wire originations, check deposits and P2P transactions as the top five fraud threats on the horizon.
