How much have you saved your customers?

First National Bank South Dakota reports that in the first half of 2006 they saved their customers $1,130,397.23. How? By helping them avoid fraud losses such as:

• Nigerian scams,
  
• Internet sales schemes,
  
• fake lottery winnings,' and
  
• various other types of fraud
  

Lee Gass is the bank's Security Officer. He continually trains staff on frauds that are happening across the US in an effort to raise awareness. He tells them about counterfeit checks, cashiers checks, and other false monetary exchanges he sees in the news. And since they've stopped more than one million dollars in losses that would have been theirs, or their customers, it would seem that this training is paying for itself many times over.

Gass and the bank staff also remind customers that maybe they are not the one single person in the world that was contacted about some poor orphan's troubles getting millions of dollars out of their country or that the eBay sales check was accidentally made for too much money and they're trusting the bank customer to wire the excess back to Nigeria.

Are there things here that other banks could emulate? Certainly. Training and customer awareness are obviously contributing factors. Remember that the BOL Security page has information and links to help you.

• Robbery suspects and stories of recent crimes.
  
• Listings of Alerts and Counterfeit Checks
  
• ID Fraud and Phishing Center
  
• Phishing and Scam letter samples