Criminals are now creating non-existent identities to conduct fraud, survey finds

SINGAPORE (Feb 7): While prevention technologies have managed to deter identity fraud activities such as card skimming, criminals are now beginning to steal identities or even constructing entirely new ones to obtain real credit cards from banks.

This is according to Dan McConaghy, president of FICO in Asia Pacific, a predictive analytics and data science firm whose recent survey – conducted among 37 financial institution executives at the annual FICO Asia Pacific Fraud Forum held in Bangkok, Thailand, in Oct 2017 – found that six in 10 of the region’s banks are experiencing application fraud using synthetic identities.

A synthetic identity is constructed from blending of elements and data from multiple individuals to create a new persona, which is then used by scammers to apply for accounts and make the uncovering of fraudulent transactions more complicated.

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