Protect your Business and Consumer Accounts

At Summit State Bank, protecting your identity, accounts and credit is of utmost importance to us. We have many controls in place to watch for fraudulent activity, but working together we stand the best chance of safeguarding your best interest.

Wire Transfers

Wire transfer fraud schemes have escalated over the past several years. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported that:

Losses amounted to more than $2.3 billion.

Since January 2015, the FBI has seen a 270% increase in identified victims and loss.

Fraud Schemes:

Business Email Compromise (BEC) is a sophisticated scam targeting businesses that regularly perform wire transfer payments. Fraudsters impersonate a CEO, CFO, other company official, or vendor to target someone within the company authorized to send payments through phone, email or fax to initiate a fraudulent wire transfer.

Supplier Swindle is another form of fraud where a request is received from a known supplier, to wire funds for invoice payment to an alternate, fraudulent account. The request may be made via telephone, fax, or email and is so similar to a legitimate request that it is hard to detect as fraud. If this activity is not normal business practice, contact the known supplier to make sure it is legitimate.

A Business Executive receiving or initiating a request for a wire transfer is another common practice where the email of a high-level executive is compromised and used to request wire fraud. This normally takes place by sending an email from the compromised account to a second employee within the same company that normally handles these types of request. Alternatively, the request can be sent directly from the compromised account to the financial institution with instructions to urgently send funds.

Tips to protect yourself:

• Never share your social security number, account information or passwords.
• Shred sensitive papers.
• Sign up for text or email alerts for account transfers, balances or stop pay results.
• Protect your mobile device by using the passcode lock when not in use.
• Keep an eye out for missing mail.
• Enroll in online banking to reduce the chance of paper statements being stolen.
• Monitor your bank accounts and credit reports regularly.
• Don’t pay upfront for a promise that appears too good to be true.