Links in “Financial Crime”

The Internet Crime Complaint Center has issued a warning about a new fraud that involves hacking into the email account of an executive and then issuing emails to company employees requesting them to take certain actions such as transferring funds. Knowing that most employees will respond promptly to an executive’s request, the Center noted in its IC3 notice that the average loss from these fraudulent actions is $55,000. [8/4/14]

FinCEN is working together with its Mexican counterpart, the Unidad de Inteligencia Financiera, in order to crack down on cross-border cash transactions. FinCEN Director Jennifer Shasky Calvery states that “FinCEN is committed to working closely with our Mexican counterparts, law enforcement, and industry partners to bring greater transparency along our border and safeguarding the integrity of our financial systems.” [8/4/14]

Employee fraud has led to $311.4 million in losses in the past three years. To help limit insider fraud NCUA has released a series of videos that can be viewed on the NCUA YouTube channel. [7/24/14]

FinCEN has taken action against FBME Bank Ltd, citing the foreign bank for weak anti-money laundering controls. FinCEN’s director states, “the United States will not stand by while financial institutions help those who intend to harm or threaten Americans.” [7/18/14]

Yet another internal fraud case in Illinois has led to the convictions of two former credit union employees (a manager and a teller) at a small Illinois credit union. The two former employees were convicted of embezzling over $320,000 over a multi-year time period.  Prosecutors stated that a lack of oversight allowed the employees, which represented two-thirds of the entire staff at the $4.2 million credit union, to engage in the criminal activities. [7/16/14]

Federal Trade Commission settles with a Florida-based payday lender. According to the complaint, the defendant used consumers’ personal financial information it had collected through its websites on the pretense of helping them to get a loan to withdraw $30 from the bank accounts of tens of thousands of consumers, without authorization and without providing anything of value in return. [7/14/14]

Despite what appears to be considerable evidence to the contrary, Charles Juska, former president of $25 million Tazewell County School Employees CU in Pekin, IL, pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud and forgery. Prosecutors claim that Juska used an elaborate shell game that involved forging members’ signatures and creating numerous fraudulent loans in order to cover other delinquent loans and to hide delinquencies from his board and loan committee. [7/14/14]

The 2014 edition of the top five ways to rob a credit union is here and you may be in for a surprise. Only one of the top five from 2013 made the top five this year. [7/9/14]

Three cases that reflect insider and vendor fraud highlight the need for strong internal controls and effective vendor oversight. In one case a used auto dealer engaged to sell a credit union’s repossessed cars sold the cars for one price, told the credit union the price was less and pocketed the difference. In another case, a credit union assistant branch manager discovered fraud on the part of one of her member services representatives and decided to cash in on the fraud, as well. [7/1/14]

October 2015 is the date when card issuers on non-EMV enabled debit cards will have to begin assuming all liability for fraudulent debit card transactions if the transaction could not have been processed by an EMV-enabled debit card. Despite that, 17% of credit unions responding to a recent survey say that they do not intend to reissued their debit cards with the EMV chip by the 2015 deadline. [6/26/14]