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In this Issue:
 by Barry Thompson, BOL Guru
Featured Security Webinar Suspicious Activity Report: Decision Making & Documentation - October 28 by Ken Golliher
Security Products in the BankerStore  BVL Vol. 26: Effective Robbery Response & Opening Procedure  The Robbery Puzzle: So Many Pieces, So Little Time  Robbery Prevention, Response & Aftermath |
Welcome to the October Issue of Security Spotlight In this issue, read about a robbery duo in Oklahoma and the capture of one we featured last month. Get tips on what to look for when a nervous customer presents a check at the teller window. Be sure to check out "Security Shorts" for some interesting tales about stupid and unusual robberies, as well as all the regular areas in this spotlight on security. Reward Offered for Robbery Duo  Oklahoma State Bank, Edmond, OK was robbed by an armed male and female duo. The robbers are described as black, wearing ball caps, with their faces were covered by bandanas. The female carried a rifle. The male robber jumped on the counter and struck two tellers with the butt of a semi-automatic pistol. The injured tellers were taken to the hospital. Oklahoma State Bank is offering a $25,000 reward and the Oklahoma Bankers Association is offering a $5,000 reward for the capture of these bank robbers.
Check our Bank Robbery page for photos and information on all the latest robbery suspects. Protect your institution by posting signage prohibiting hats, hoods and sunglasses. The effectiveness of this simple sign on your door is unsurpassed. Available now in the Banker Store.  Training for What you Hope will Never Happen What happens when you try to train bank staff on security? You may get a lot of ho-hum attitudes because we all know that banking is a safe occupation. To a large extent that's true, but security training isn't like other training on many banking topics. Security training is usually for those extreme circumstances everyone hopes won't happen. It is like making a Will. Everyone knows it could be needed any day, but they hope it won't be. Is banking safe? Absolutely, and it is safer when employees receive training on robbery issues so that people know what to do, when, how to do it, and what things to notice.  Providing real examples of crimes will help your bank staff understand that security training is important. For example, on September 19, 2009 in Oak Cliff, TX, a Dallas suburb, an armed Brinks security guard arrived to service a drive-up ATM at a Chase branch at 9:30 in the morning. Two men were waiting for the armored car. When Cresencio Borquez got out with a bag of cash to refill the ATM, one of the two robbers grabbed him around the neck and fired his gun, killing Borquez. The robbers made a fast getaway, leaving the cash bags behind. It wasn't immediately clear if any cash was removed from the bags. The robbers are also suspects in an earlier bank robbery. When robbers are in the bank, you want them out. That didn't happen at the Guardian Credit Union in West Allis, WI. A man wearing a mask implied he was armed as he gave notes to three tellers. One of the tellers was putting cash in a bag that the robber was holding. A 54-year-old good Samaritan saw what was happening. As it happened, his wife was also at customer there at the time, and was next to the ones being robbed. To protect his wife, he attacked the robber and held him until police arrived. This had a better ending than the ATM theft, but it could also have been much worse.There are bank robberies that have a touch of humor. In Ft. Lauderdale, FL. a robber asked a teller for a kiss before he left. That is the humor. What is deadly serious is the fight he first had with the bank's armed security guard as the robber tried to disarm the guard. Once the robber was inside the branch, he punched the branch manager in the face as he tried to call 911. The robber pulled his semiautomatic handgun, jumped the teller line and forced the tellers to give him money. He left the bank with $9,000 according to the report. The manager and guard followed the robber and were able to tell police the neighborhood he entered. The thief was arrested hiding in a backyard about fifty yards from where he was last seen. He had been dropping money as he fled and had only $2,000 at the time of his arrest. Think about your camera placement too, as well as a policy of no hats, no hoodies. The robber of the Kleberg Bank in Corpus Christi, TX turned himself in days after handing the teller a note and making off with cash. He was so stressed from seeing his picture on the news that he surrendered. When it comes to serious training some bankers turn to a mock robbery. Consider such an exercise carefully before you try it. Babette Perry, a New Jersey pharmacy technician, says in a lawsuit that she was not told in advance about the training exercise she was involved in that was similar to a mock bank robbery. She has now been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
In September, there were twenty Alerts and Counterfeits issued by the OCC and the FDIC. What can you do when you have a customer presenting a cashier's check, official check or a bank money order for deposit or cashing? Your tellers need to ask some questions, review that customer's relationship and look for any warning signs that the item may be a problem. In many cases there are design differences between the authentic items and the fakes reported in the regulators' alerts. Occasionally you may see one that says "Authorised Signature" which can be a glaring misspelling in the U.S., but you have no way of knowing what every bank's items look like. When the customer appears nervous, presents some story that seems fictional, or has a new and untested account, look the item up on BOL's Alerts and Counterfeits page and/or call the bank, based on a valid number. One of this month's counterfeit cashier's checks had a fraudulent telephone number listed on it, which would probably have taken one to directly to the scammers for a phony verification. The real bank would have disagreed, however. You can find these notices and more on the BOL Alerts and Counterfeits page. More Lessons from CrimeDex One of this month's CrimeDex alerts involves a bogus debt collection scam that has targeted victims from coast to coast. The scammers appear to have personal information such as cell phone and bank account numbers of their targets, making their threatening calls seem more genuine. If one of your customers mentions a call about a payday loan he doesn't remember taking, he may have been targeted by this scam. In another alert, a Massachusetts bank reports that counterfeit checks on an account of one of its customers are circulating in the Midwest in a contest scam. If you haven't alerted tellers and customers about this common counterfeit check symptom — checks from one area of the country being sent to another region for no apparent legitimate reason — consider this alert a reminder. One of the month's most interesting CrimeDex emails describes a scam involving counterfeit coin-counting kiosk receipts. If you or your business customers have publicly-accessible coin-counting machines that issue receipts to be exchanged for cash, watch for this scam. BOL CrimeDex subscribers receive alerts like these and others whenever alerts are posted to the CrimeDex site. The alerts they receive can be filtered by region or state. Subscribers can also post their own alerts to other members of the expanding CrimeDex community, and selectively post them by state and/or region. Check it out at http://www.bankersonline.com/crimedex/! 
Have you read the Security Blog on BOL this month? Read more about Chad Schaffner who robbed at least fourteen banks in six states, and how he was caught with an Amber Alert. At that same link you can read about the use, or inability to use thumbprints as a way to reduce fraudulent checks. Read these two blogs here.  If you want to dissect a spam message to show bankers and customers how some messages are faked, look at the Anti-Phishing Blog. | |||
Effective suspicious activity reporting requires a dependable flow of information leading from a wide variety of sources; e.g. tellers, CSRs, legal process clerks, loan officers, operations personnel, etc. to an individual or group that makes SAR filing decisions. Those decision makers focus on 1) whether the activity is suspicious and 2) whether a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) filing is required or advisable. That decision making process must be well documented, particularly in circumstances where a decision is made not to file a SAR. In 1998, and again in 2004, the functional federal bank regulatory agencies sent Interagency Memoranda indicating all federally supervised financial institutions should establish internal processes for the filing of SARs. Many have neglected this responsibility. Banks must have a demonstrable SAR filing and decision making process and this program focuses on how to build and document just such a process.
Last month's Security Spotlight featured a brazen armed serial robber who robbed banks throughout the southern and mid-western US. Chad Schaffner has been captured in Kingdom City, MO. Retired Missouri State Trooper Sam Lakey spotted and recognized Schaffner. He then went to America's Most Wanted Website where he found a description of the suspect's car and his license plate number. Schaffner was arrested without incident.
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