Transfer fraud

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The bank fraud is a kind of fraud in the payment traffic , which in turn is a part of the so-called cashless payments. Frauds opening accounts at banks are usually the starting point for transfer fraud, which is usually committed by forging signatures .

Wire transfer fraud is a form of bank fraud or payment fraud .

Transfer fraud cases

Within the framework of the police crime statistics of the Federal Criminal Police Office, the total of known cases of transfer fraud together with account opening fraud for property and forgery offenses is recorded under the code number "5183".

For 2011, 20,608 cases of account and transfer fraud were reported.

Account and transfer fraud
year cases Clearance rate
2003 11,508
2004 11,694
2005 11,130
2006 13,297
2007 18,116
2008 16,039
2009 20,915 69.2%
2010 19,520 63.4%
2011 20,608 58.6%

The vast majority of offenses in this fraud division are carried out with transfers. In 2011 there were 16,522 cases, in 2010 15,877 cases. The clearing-up rate has dropped significantly in recent years: while it was still at a level of 69.2 percent in 2009, it fell to 63.4 percent in 2010 and is now 58.6 percent.

Most recently, the BKA published a sum for total damage in the area of ​​account and transfer fraud in May 2007: it was estimated at 35,510,921 euros in 2006. Of the 13,297 cases that became known during the year, 2589 were individual damages in the range between 500 and 2500 euros.

Regional accumulations of waves of fraud are striking.

  • The Hessian Police Crime Statistics for 2007, published on March 10, 2008, recorded 1,554 cases of account opening and transfer fraud (+ 27.6 percent compared to 2006).
  • According to a report in the Neue Ruhr Zeitung dated March 2, 2007, the Düsseldorf Criminal Police registered 484 cases of account opening and transfer fraud in 2006 (up 130 percent compared to 2005).
  • In August 2006 there were increasing reports of fraud in the greater Stuttgart area.
  • In Berlin, a total of 3007 cases were recorded in 2006 under the heading of account opening and transfer fraud . Compared to 2005, there was a significant increase of 899 cases, which corresponds to an increase of 42.6 percent within one year. During the same period in Berlin, the clearance rate for these crimes had risen from 68.3 to 78.0 percent.
  • In 2003, the area of ​​responsibility of the Düsseldorf district government recorded an increase in cases of over 500 percent compared to the previous year. 2,712 of the 11,508 cases registered in the whole of Germany were in the Düsseldorf area at the time.

Forms of transfer fraud

The bank details of the injured party are determined in various ways. In Austria and Germany, cases have been making headlines since 2005, according to which transfer slips were stolen from the collective mailboxes of bank branches. "It also happens that the boxes are broken open or pried out of the walls," said Chief Police Commissioner Jens-Oliver Heuer from the Berlin State Criminal Police Office. The police in Oberhausen published a report on March 7, 2008, according to which three people from Oberhausen obtained the bank details of their victims through participation in Internet auctions and the like. a. found out about eBay.

Other scams:

  • Perpetrators simply copy the requested information from business letterheads. In 1995, Focus warned of this attack scenario in a report on transfer fraud under the title “Better than bank robbery”.
  • On August 14, 2006, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) warned against e-mails stating Germany Online Consult or Consult-Online-AG . The alleged sender of e-mail advertising promised to transfer a sum of money up to one hundred euros, provided that a signed form with name, address, bank details and handwritten signature is sent by fax or e-mail.
  • On March 20, 2008, the Rotenburg police station published a warning about the following scam: Victims unexpectedly receive a registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt. The perpetrators speculate that the victims fill out the return receipt in order to gain access to the contents of the registered letter. The return receipt is used by the perpetrator to receive a facsimile of the victim's signature. The perpetrator receives the victim's account details through online auctions such as eBay. Fraudsters can use this data to forge transfer slips. The criminal police ask citizens not to accept unchecked registered letters with acknowledgment of receipt.

On fraudulently obtained original transfers, the recipient's data is then manipulated or the data is entered on freely accessible blank forms and the signature is forged. The fraudulently opened account is now specified as the account entitled to withdraw, from which the amounts will then be transferred or withdrawn as quickly as possible.

Victim

In theory, anyone can be a victim, but large companies such as telephone companies or electricity suppliers are often chosen as victims in the hope that the large organizations will not notice the fake until it is too late. Since 2004 it has also been reported that fraudsters target job seekers or pensioners, sometimes with the aim of money laundering .

Damage caused by transfer fraud is usually settled by credit institutions, but in case of doubt the victim has the burden of proof that he did not act lightly. As with the direct debit procedure, the booking cannot simply be canceled.

Legal Aspects

Transfer fraud is a criminological term and different from criminal law . In Germany, the offense of fraud (§ 263 StGB ), the offense of spying on data (§ 202a StGB) and the offense of forging documents (§ 267 StGB) are relevant.

Checking the signature on payment receipts is part of the bank's duty of care in business dealings with its customers. For this reason, the bank bears the risk of forgery. She has to bear the damage suffered by the customer by executing the forged transfer (BGH Az .: XI ZR 325/00).

Analogous to the mandatory review of paper receipts in payment transactions, the Wiesloch District Court decided that the main part of the risk of counterfeiting also had to be borne by the bank for a transfer order (Ref .: 4 C 57/08), provided that the duties of care of an "average PC user" were observed ( e.g. updated antivirus program and active firewall). According to the relevant court decision, a bank cannot pass the entire risk on to its account holder.

The Higher Regional Court of Koblenz came to the conclusion in a judgment of November 26, 2009 (AZ: 2 U 116/09) that the bank had to bear the risk of a falsified transfer order. The transfer was allegedly fished out of the mailbox of a bank branch and forged. The Koblenz Regional Court had previously dismissed the bank customer's action. The OLG no longer allowed revision.

Damage

A transfer fraud can cause enormous damage, which is usually at the expense of the injured person's house bank . The institutes bear the risk if they do not check the signature ( BGH , Az. XI ZR 117/96 and BGH, Az. XI ZR 325/00). The OLG Koblenz confirmed this legal opinion in a judgment of November 26, 2009 (AZ: 2 U 116/09).

  • In a report by the German dispatch service dated September 21, 2006, the amount of damage for 2005 is estimated at around 45 million euros.
  • The 2006 police crime statistics, published in May 2007, put the total amount of known damage in the area of ​​account and transfer fraud at 35,510,921 euros. Of the 13,297 cases that became known in 2006, a focus of the individual damage was in the range between 500 and 2,500 euros - 2,589 cases belonged to this group.

By way of comparison, damage amounts from the United States: In a survey ("Deposit Account Fraud Survey Report 2004") by the American Banker's Association (ABA), the damage caused by check fraud there in 2003 was estimated at 677 million US dollars. The average loss amount was $ 1,098, with a total of 616,469 cases reported.

causes

In 2003 around 1.6 billion paper transfers and checks were issued in Germany. For the individual institute, checking these documents is associated with an enormous amount of time and money. In 2003 the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe had to process 54 percent of these documents. TAI / DZ Bank and etb / Postbank followed with 17 percent . ZVG / WGZ-Bank and other institutions each accounted for 6 percent .

The MDR magazine Umschau reported on August 26, 2008 that 95 out of 100 transfers were carried out, although they did not have the signature of an authorized person. In a statement by the Central Association of the German Banking Industry “Central Credit Committee” it is admitted that “sometimes condensed checks are only carried out above certain amount limits, while samples are taken below this limit.” For the banks, checking the transfers is also a question of costs. The statement goes on to say that transfers in bulk payments must be processed quickly and inexpensively in the interests of customers.

The television magazines ZDF WISO and Plusminus have repeatedly reported on this practice in various reports in 1997, 2001 and 2004. Research by the business magazine Profil (BR) revealed that signatures for amounts under 3,500 euros are apparently only rarely checked for authenticity.

The perpetrators can therefore often speculate on the carelessness of the issuing bank, according to which fake transfers are not discovered in the normal course of business.

Prevention, prevention

In April 2007, Berliner Sparkasse blocked all external mailboxes in all 150 branches of its private customer center in Berlin . The bank customers were asked to hand in their transfer slips at the counters during opening hours. A spokeswoman announced in an article in the Berliner Morgenpost from April 12, 2007 that the mailboxes would be upgraded.

In addition to the physical access protection of the storage locations of signed transfer slips (e.g. in bank letterboxes), responsible bank customers or attentive bank employees are important factors in fraud prevention. But only through the full automation of the signature check can all transfer documents be checked and filtered if necessary. Only then can the employee in the credit institute actually focus on the suspicious transactions.

The first version of a completely software-based check of transfers was used at Credit Suisse in 1994, based on a German-Swiss joint development by the companies App Informatik Davos, IBM and Softpro . This test method is now also used in Australia, Brazil, Great Britain, Malaysia, South Africa, Trinidad and Cyprus, among others. The software is based on the knowledge of handwriting experts. In the case of signatures on paper, the static image features are analyzed: these include intersections, junctions, loops and arches. These elements are filtered, calculated and weighted. When comparing signatures, a degree of similarity is determined. If this is within a predefined tolerance range, the compared signatures can consequently be assigned to the same signatory.

Currently, over 30 million checks and transfers are checked using this technology every day around the world, most of them in the United States, where around 40 billion checks are issued each year, according to the Bank of International Settlements.

See also

literature

  • Jörg-M. Lenz, Christiane Schmidt: The electronic signature: an analogy to a handwritten signature? Deutscher Sparkassen-Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-09-305703-5 (especially Chapter 8 on the acceptance and verification of signatures).
  • Beate Koch: Watching your fingers . In: Fraunhofer magazine . No. 4/1998 , 1998 ( fraunhofer.de - making transfer fraud traceable through writing paste analysis ).

Web links

Reports of fraud
Prevention

swell

  1. ^ T-Online : Bank fraud: current news & information - T-Online . Retrieved April 21, 2017.
  2. ↑ Payment fraud : how can companies protect themselves . Retrieved April 21, 2017.
  3. ↑ WISO : recipients manipulated, accounts plundered: transfers stolen from bank mailboxes , September 11, 2006 ( memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Berliner Zeitung : Andreas Kopietz: “Do you want 50 euros extra?”: Fraudsters use schoolchildren for transfer tricks, April 14, 2007, p. 25
  5. ↑ Federal Office for Information Security : BSI warns of dubious e-mail advertising  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , August 14, 2006 (press release).@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.bsi.bund.de  
  6. ↑ WDR.de : Criminal without noticing it: Transfer fraudsters hitch job seekers for themselves , August 31, 2004 ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Spiegel -online: Friederike Ott: online judgment - banks are liable for damage caused by phishing attacks , July 4, 2008.
  8. ↑ Justiz.rlp.de: Judgment ( Memento of August 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) of the Higher Regional Court Koblenz of November 26, 2009 (AZ: 2 U 116/09)
  9. ↑ Berliner Morgenpost : This is how fraudsters plunder current accounts , April 12, 2007 ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )