Federal officials have recently issued an alert to many banking institutions about a rise in mail check theft- something that has been affecting the state of Georgia. Some experts, like David Maimon, are of the opinion that the Peach State ranks among the top 10 states in the country that has been seeing mail theft.
This has led to several instances where scammers have washed the checks. This is an old scam that seems to be making a return, and thieves are reportedly walking away with several thousands of dollars. Maimon stated that the country was seeing an extremely high rate of fraud that was never seen before. He also shared several videos of thieves stealing mail from individual mailboxes. On quite a few occasions, the thieves could be seen climbing inside the blue boxes of the USPS.
Check Theft A Big Problem In Georgia
Maimon’s cybersecurity research team at Georgia State University has been involved in monitoring these check theft criminals on the darknet in order to uncover several emerging trends. The latest trend in this scam has been check washing, where the thieves start removing the dollar amount, and the recipient on the check, and then make it their own.
Maimon explained that cashing someone else’s check was just the beginning of a long road since the check has a series of details, and identifiers that the criminals have now started using in order to open bank accounts, ask for loans, establish lines for credit, buy weapons, and manufacture fake driver licenses.
Maimon considers Georgia to be one of the worst states when it comes to check theft, with several hot spots situated in Brookhaven, Dunwoody, Columbus, and Buckhead. The police in Brookhaven have already reported 41 such incidents of mail theft in 2021, which rose to 60 in 2022, and 12 in 2023.
