Despite the shift to electronic payments, checks remain a heavily exploited instrument in business payments because a check carries a routing number, an account number, and an authorized signature on a single piece of paper that travels through the mail.
Common variants include check washing, where a stolen check is chemically altered and rewritten, counterfeit checks printed against harvested account data, and simple interception of outbound mail from unsecured collection points.
Common questions
Yes. It remains one of the most frequently reported payment fraud types affecting organizations, largely because checks expose account credentials in physical form.
Positive pay with payee name verification, combined with moving high value disbursements off paper entirely.
Sources and further reading
- FinCEN advisories and guidance
- FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), annual Internet Crime Report
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