What’s Your Fraud SPF Number?
Three Rays of Check Fraud. One Sunscreen Will Not Catch Them All
It is June. The drugstore SPF aisle just doubled in size, every other Reel is a dermatologist breaking down mineral versus chemical, and most of us know broad spectrum is the floor, not the ceiling.
I have been thinking about that floor this week.
The Federal Reserve’s 2026 Risk Officer Report dropped May 14. 63% of FIs reported check fraud attempts last year. Three subtypes pulled the average up. Each one behaves like a different kind of UV exposure. Most FI screens are still wearing SPF 15.
The Three Rays
Counterfeit checks (+32%): the UVB. The burn you can see. Generative AI has turned counterfeit production into a print-from-anywhere operation. No paper to steal, no chemicals to source. Industry calls it check cooking and the field keeps growing.
2026 REPORT SIGNAL: The fastest-growing visible threat
Check washing (+21%): the UVA. The aging ray. Stolen mail, acetone, fresh payee line. The damage stacks across deposits until someone notices the wrinkle.
Takeaway: Institutions that only look for the obvious burn miss the slower exposure. Washing losses often accumulate quietly across branches and channels before anyone connects the pattern.
The Spot You Missed
Payee forgery (+18%): the spot you missed. The check is real, the signature is real, the routing number is real. Only the payee line is wrong. It often arrives with an account takeover or insider access. Nothing looks visibly off at deposit.
2026 REPORT SIGNAL: Authentic instruments, altered intent
Broad spectrum is the answer
SPF 15 catches the burn. Broad spectrum catches the rest.
The FIs ahead of these three rays use shared fraud data alongside their own. They flag counterfeit and washing patterns the day those patterns appear at any institution in the network, not the day they appear at theirs. They see the check that already cleared somewhere else last week and they decide before posting.
Takeaway: One dermatologist tracks one person’s exposure history over years. A clinic with thousands of patients sees the patterns across all of them and catches the early signs faster. Consortium intelligence works the same way for checks.
Also in the Forecast
The same Fed report flagged three more high-UV days this quarter:
Watch list: account takeover, ACH account-holder scams, and wire fraud
- Account takeover up 7 points YoY, hitting 23% of surveyed FIs
- ACH account-holder scams increased at 41% of FIs
- Wire fraud still climbing, driven by BEC and money mule transfers
Takeaway: Check fraud does not operate alone. Institutions dealing with one pressure point are usually seeing stress build across adjacent payment rails at the same time.
The Long Arc
A bad sunburn on Memorial Day weekend turns into a peeling shoulder by July and damage you do not notice until next spring. The harm in the mirror this week was usually done weeks or months earlier.
The pattern: earlier exposure, later loss recognition
Check fraud is the same. The counterfeit that cleared at another FI last month is the one washing through your branch this morning. The forgery sitting on a deposit slip today is the one an account holder calls about next quarter.
Takeaway: The FIs that get to fall without a burn share one habit: they reapply, they cover the spots they cannot see, and they check the patterns the rest of the network is already showing them.
Final Thoughts
Summer analogies aside, the message is practical: if your fraud program is built to catch only the obvious version of a check attack, it is probably under-covered.
The institutions making progress are not waiting for a loss to become local before treating it as real. They are using broader visibility, faster pattern recognition, and stronger context at decision time.
If you want to talk through how consortium data can sharpen deposit fraud detection without forcing a redesign of your existing workflows, we would be glad to compare notes.
