The Federal Reserve recently issued another edition of its Consumer Compliance Outlook (Second Issue 2025). This special issue focused primarily on fraud. A 2024 annual report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) showed that, not only is fraud against consumers increasing significantly, it also comes at a huge cost. For instance, it noted that …losses from all fraud/scam categories totaled $12.5 billion dollars — a 25 percent increase from 2023 losses of $10 billion. It’s important to note that these totals are likely much higher since the report only captured fraud that was reported.
Between 2020 and 2024, FinCEN also reported a 110% increase in the number of fraud-related SARs received from financial institutions. There were 552,920 SARs in 2020 and 1,165,642 in 2024, which encompassed ACH, check, credit/debit card, mail, and wire fraud.
The issue includes articles highlighting mail-related check fraud and counterfeit instrument scams as well as confidence scams (fraudulent activities designed to take advantage of a person’s trust) that are worth a read. While your BSA department needs to be aware of these types of fraud for BSA monitoring and reporting requirements, much of the fraud described affects the deposit/operations side. Thus, it is important that these team members be kept up to date as well.
2025/09/11