CHICAGO — Fraudsters in the Chase bank fraud unit are using fake identities to gain access to customers’ accounts, according to a new investigation by Politico.
The company said it has hired a forensic firm to examine the data to determine whether the fraudulent transactions were used to make fraudulent claims to the bank, and to find any employees who were part of those fraudulent transactions.
“The data uncovered so far shows that some employees in the fraud unit made false claims to Chase to obtain bank money, or used Chase’s fraud-prevention systems to make fraud claims,” said Jason Karp, who leads the investigation for Politico.
“The fraud unit has a strong history of making fraudulent claims, and the team is working to determine who else was involved in these transactions.
If any employees were part, they should be fired.
In the meantime, they can be brought to justice.”
The company said in a statement that it is “deeply troubled” by the actions of the fraudsters.
“We’re aware of the findings and are committed to helping resolve the matter,” the statement said.
“We are committed in working with federal authorities and law enforcement, and our investigators will be gathering all of the facts needed to determine the full scope of the allegations.”
The investigation was triggered by a complaint by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), which filed a civil lawsuit against the bank in September 2016 alleging the frauds violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The bank, in its response to the complaint, said that “the NCUA is aware of one incident in which an individual created a false account in order to make a fraudulent claim to the NCUA, and one of the fraudulent accounts resulted in an unauthorized withdrawal of funds from a Chase account.”
Chase’s response also pointed out that the bank “does not use its fraud-fighting system to access customer information.”
“In this case, the fraudster created the account to make unauthorized withdrawals and then used a Chase fraud-alert system to report the unauthorized withdrawals, which resulted in the bank having to initiate a criminal investigation,” the company said.
The investigation into the fraud in the Fraud Unit was launched after a tip came in about fraudulent claims that allegedly had been made to the Chase banking services department, according the NCUAs complaint.
In this case it was revealed that the fraud was actually made to a customer who was not involved in the fraudulent activity, the bank said.
“In order to investigate the fraud, we hired a private forensic firm who is examining the data in an effort to determine if there are any employees or individuals who were in any of the transactions,” the bank added.
“Once we determine that any of these individuals were involved in any fraudulent activity they should also be terminated.”