ADVICE

A Surge in Stolen Checks: What You Should Know

A new trend has emerged in recent months of bank check theft

Photo by Ekaterina Belinskaya from Pexels

According to Georgia State University’s Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group, mail-related check fraud has spiked in the United States since August.

Per David Maimon, associate professor of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia State University and director of the Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group, criminals are employing two methods to do this:

1. Criminals will take checks from residential mailboxes and change the payee and amount to steal money from victims’ bank accounts.
2. The crooks purchase keys for US Postal Service mailboxes stolen from postal carriers on the dark web. They then take the keys to the blue boxes, empty them, and retrieve the checks written to utility companies or given to family.

Darknet Markets

During the month of October, the cybersecurity firm discovered an average of 1,325 stolen checks for sale per week.

The firm looked at only 60 darknet markets; however, thousands are presently active.

According to Maimon, the face value of the checks his team discovered in October was $11.6 million as written…