Is Your Check 21 Implementation a Fraud Hazard?

The implementation of the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (“Check 21”) in the U.S. means that check-handling and collection will experience a drastic increase in speed.

However, it also portends other seismic issues in the financial services industry — some that are especially foreboding.

Namely, that converting paper checks to digital image can have unintended consequences that make it harder to prosecute against fraud, while opening the door to mass compromise.

About the Experts

Frank W. Abagnale is a noted author, lecturer, and consultant, and a respected authority on the subjects of forgery, embezzlement and secure documents. For over twenty-five years Abagnale has lectured to and consulted with hundreds of financial institutions, corporations and government agencies around the world. He was also the subject of the major motion picture, “Catch Me If You Can,” directed by Steven Spielberg.

Ori Eisen is CEO and President of Phoenix-based The 41st Parameter, which has developed some of the industry's most advanced fraud prevention systems for protecting Internet, mail-order and telephone-order merchants against fraud. Eisen served as the Worldwide Fraud Director for American Express focusing on Internet, MOTO and Counterfeit fraud.

Elazar Katz is director of the Active Risk Monitoring Practice at Unisys. Katz specializes in the rapidly growing field of cross-channel risks and the real-time countermeasures required to address large-scale fraud attacks. Katz meets regularly with bankers worldwide and brings a global perspective to emerging fraud trends. Katz is currently participating in the Financial Services Technology Consortium’s Counter-Phishing task force and has been quoted and published in numerous publications.