Jamie Bennet
Haywood Talcove, CEO of the government business at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, warned that transnational criminals are using new technological scams to commit financial fraud.
He told GOBankingRates in an interview posted Wednesday that the U.S. government lost “hundreds of billions of dollars” to pandemic-related fraud due to accessible personally identifiable information on the dark web and fraud prevention system challenges.
“Now that ‘pandemic relief’ programs are over, or winding down, these same fraudsters are using our PII, except they’re going after individuals rather than the government,” added Talcove, a three-time recipient of the Wash100 award.
The personal finance website highlighted the rising U.S. cases of electronic benefits transfer phishing, ATM tap-and-glue schemes, and artificial intelligence deepfakes to commit banking and insurance fraud.
To avoid voice cloning or deepfake scams, security questions should be put in place to verify the identity of a person requesting a bank or wire transfer, according to the publication.
In case of unemployment insurance fraud, in which deepfake is used to intercept facial recognition software, the Department of Labor has an online resource where consumers can file a complaint.
Recent reports of ATM tap-and-glue schemes have prompted Chase Bank to remind consumers to log out of their account and be vigilant in hiding their PIN codes during ATM transactions.
Specialists gave the same reminder for using EBT cards, which are increasingly being copied in swiping machines to steal from beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
