Fraud Management & Cybercrime , ID Fraud , Video

Fake Firms Flourish as Fraudsters Focus on B2C Scams

Fraudsters are increasingly focusing on synthetic entity fraud because forming a corporation requires few verification checks. This lack of rigorous verification by business registrars has led to an explosion in fake companies, Andrew La Marca, senior director of risk and public records operations at Dun & Bradstreet.

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"Fraudsters know that business registrars do not have the ability nor the resources to verify the information of who is coming to the front door and forming a business," La Marca said.

Also, the industry in general understands B2C fraud more than B2B fraud, he said. "There is a great sense of what consumer fraud is and what it means to protect our identities. The B2B space gets credit goods and services for which banks don't have to pull a credit report on a business if they don't want to," he said.

In contrast, banks and lenders must pull a credit report to verify a consumer's identity and credit worthiness. "Synthetic entity fraud is a different animal, and fraudsters understand the impact of different kinds of fraud."

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group, La Marca discussed:

• The major challenges in fighting synthetic entity fraud;
• Synthetic entity fraud trends;
• How financial institutions can address this growing type of fraud.

La Marca leads risk and public intelligence operations and serves as the global fraud data owner at Dun & Bradstreet. He has more than 13 years of experience as an anti-fraud professional and previously worked at Capital One and Ally Financial.