Fergie's Tech Blog

Fraud Police Buckling Under Mountains of Data

Jeremy Kirk writes on ComputerWorld UK:

Fraud investigators are struggling to cope with vast quantities of data sent to them by financial institutions, meaning some crimes may go uninvestigated or even unnoticed, experts said on Wednesday.

The issue is prompting banks and other financial institutions to ask law enforcement and regulators to share with them more of the data they have about suspicious transactions, in order to better combat fraud.

Banks and transfer agencies are required by regulators in the US and the UK to file reports when they detect a potentially illegal transaction, said Olga Maitland, head of the International Association of Money Transfer Networks, at the Fraud World 2007 conference in London.

Up to 300,000 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) are filed per month in the US, and up to 200,000 a year in the UK, but most of those reports "disappear into a black hole" because law enforcement agencies don't have the resources to investigate each one, she said.

posted by Fergie @ 9/26/2007 09:54:00 AM