Fraudsters are selling utility accounts. If you’re not detecting it, you’re paying for it.
Fraudsters and identity thieves are selling utility accounts on the dark web, on Telegram, and even out in the open. For example, SentiLink’s fraud intelligence team found a Facebook group with nearly 3,000 members dedicated to buying a fraudulent “CPN and apartment” package.
We also found a website for a company that offers Credit Privacy Numbers (CPNs), fake SSNs marketed to people looking for “gas/heat” and “lights/electric” as “clean” 9-digit numbers to be used in place of SSNs when applying for utility services. The company offers a “fresh start” to consumers with “a high [bill] or disconnected services” by offering them what is effectively a fake identity that will allow them to defraud their utility provider.
Unfortunately, these types of “services” are not rare. If you’re not leveraging a sophisticated anti-fraud solution to weed out these fraudsters at the point of application, you’re paying for them later down the line.
Utility applications flagged as high-risk for identity theft had an average write-off that is 4x higher than low-scoring applications. This application flagged as at high-risk for synthetic fraud had an average write-off nearly 3x higher than low-scoring applications. Identifying these fraudsters at the point of application has the potential to save you millions in long-term write-offs.
But keeping pace with evolving fraud tactics demands more than just a highly accurate fraud scoring model. That’s why working with partners can also leverage our security research team for training and for fast manual review of tricky cases. In the last year alone, our team manually reviewed and labeled roughly 60,000 case escalations, spotting emerging fraud trends so that partners can adapt accordingly.
Based on what we’re seeing on the public web and the dark web, identity fraud in the utilities space isn’t going anywhere.
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Book a demo with SentiLink today to learn more about how our solutions can help you weed out identity fraudsters of all stripes at the point of application.
