Monday, May 17, 2004
Are Your Fraud Losses Up?
At last week's meeting of our local bank robbery task force, the discussion turned to the posting of the "No Hats, No Hoods, No Sunglasses" signs. Several bankers said they perceived the risk of robbery at their institution to be quite low (even though we've already experienced 32 bank robberies in our small state in 2004, as of April 27), and they therefore weren't interested in posting the signs for robbery prevention purposes, but they believed the posting of such a sign could have a positive effect in another area -- bank fraud suspect identification and apprehension.
From counterfeit payroll checks to forged endorsements on on-us checks, the incidence of check fraud appears to be increasing, and security officers are finding that surveillance video is fairly worthless in helping provide a description of fraudsters who are hiding behind ball caps and/or sunglasses.
By posting a sign that politely asks those entering the institution to remove sunglasses and headgear, one of three things will likely happen: l) the would-be thief will choose to go elsewhere; 2) the thief will remove obstructions to identification and you'll have good pictures of his face as he commits his fraud; or 3) the thief won't remove his headgear and sunglasses and your employees will pay close attention to his personal apppearance and his actions.
The more institutions who post the signs, the easier it will be for all institutions who post them. We want to make this the industry standard.
And while we're on the subject of video . . . Are you consistent about testing your equipment? If you're still using video, are you retiring tapes before they're worn out? Do you have a solid procedure for ensuring everything is operational and the camera angle is optimal? Nothing is more frustrating for law enforcement than to be faced with investigating a robbery where the cameras did not work.
At last week's meeting of our local bank robbery task force, the discussion turned to the posting of the "No Hats, No Hoods, No Sunglasses" signs. Several bankers said they perceived the risk of robbery at their institution to be quite low (even though we've already experienced 32 bank robberies in our small state in 2004, as of April 27), and they therefore weren't interested in posting the signs for robbery prevention purposes, but they believed the posting of such a sign could have a positive effect in another area -- bank fraud suspect identification and apprehension.
From counterfeit payroll checks to forged endorsements on on-us checks, the incidence of check fraud appears to be increasing, and security officers are finding that surveillance video is fairly worthless in helping provide a description of fraudsters who are hiding behind ball caps and/or sunglasses.
By posting a sign that politely asks those entering the institution to remove sunglasses and headgear, one of three things will likely happen: l) the would-be thief will choose to go elsewhere; 2) the thief will remove obstructions to identification and you'll have good pictures of his face as he commits his fraud; or 3) the thief won't remove his headgear and sunglasses and your employees will pay close attention to his personal apppearance and his actions.
The more institutions who post the signs, the easier it will be for all institutions who post them. We want to make this the industry standard.
And while we're on the subject of video . . . Are you consistent about testing your equipment? If you're still using video, are you retiring tapes before they're worn out? Do you have a solid procedure for ensuring everything is operational and the camera angle is optimal? Nothing is more frustrating for law enforcement than to be faced with investigating a robbery where the cameras did not work.
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