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FinCEN Flags ‘Nationwide Surge’ in Check Fraud, Theft of ‘Arrow Keys’

The U.S. financial intelligence unit alerted banks and other institutions Monday to a “nationwide surge” in mail-theft related check fraud, and instructed them to take steps to ensure they have adequate systems in place for pinpointing and flagging transactions that appear linked to the crime.

In an 8-page advisory, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network disclosed that the annual volume of suspicious activity reports filed on attempts to cash all types of checks stolen from the mail—including personal checks, business checks, tax refunds, unemployment benefits and social security—nearly doubled from 350,000 in 2021 to more than 680,000 in 2022.

Mail-theft related check fraud increasingly involves stolen or counterfeited “arrow keys,” master keys that the U.S. Postal Service uses to open blue collection boxes and cluster box units, according to the advisory, which FinCEN based on analysis of Bank Secrecy Act-related data and information from the USPS.

FinCEN directed financial institutions to reference Monday’s advisory in any SARs they file on such schemes by including the term “FIN-2023-MAILTHEFT” and marking the appropriate check box in field 34.

Moneylaundering.com may update this coverage as more information becomes available.
Topics : Anti-money laundering , Fraud
Source: U.S.: FinCEN
Document Date: February 27, 2023