How can you tell if a bank statement is fake? (2024)

In an age where financial transactions are predominantly digitized, the risk of fraudulent activities has also skyrocketed. One of today’s ever-evolving forms of financial crime is bank statement fraud, an illegal practice that can have severe consequences for individuals and businesses alike.

In this article, we’ll delve into the ins and outs of bank statement fraud, the implications of falling for phony bank statements, and most importantly, effective strategies for detecting and preventing bank statement fraud. More specifically, here are a few of the questions that we’ll be answering:

1. What is bank statement fraud?
2. How can you spot a fake bank statement?
3. How can you prevent bank statement fraud?

What is bank statement fraud?

Bank statement fraud involves the creation or manipulation of financial documents with the intent to deceive the individuals or businesses that process them. Fraudsters may engage in various deceptive practices, such as:

• Creating phony bank statements: Fraudsters can create entirely fabricated bank statements to portray a false financial standing. These phony documents may include fictitious account balances, transactions, and other misleading details.
• Manipulating bank balances: Changing bank balances is a common tactic used in bank statement fraud. By altering figures to reflect inflated or deflated bank balances, fraudsters seek to create a misleading picture of an individual or business's financial standing.
• Altering transactions: Fraudsters may tamper with legitimate bank statements by altering transaction details. This can mean changing transaction amounts, dates, or even creating entirely fictional transactions.

In each of these cases, the criminal’s ultimate goal is to mislead individuals, businesses, or financial institutions into making decisions based on false financial information.

How can you spot a fake bank statement?

Bank statements and credit card statements are important tools for confirming proof of funds, proof of income, and proof of address. When it comes to how these documents are tampered with to create fake bank balances, skilled fraudsters may skip outright document forgery and instead choose to edit PDF versions of bank account statements, which can easily be found online or downloaded from an email or banking app.

While the altered end product may be outwardly pretty convincing to a human reviewer, this approach leaves an obvious technological trail that the file has undergone unauthorized changes. So how can you spot a phony bank statement?

Start off by comparing incoming documents to templates created from examples that you’ve already confirmed as genuine. Logo detection that flags out-of-date designs or page layouts that are inconsistent with real documents can out an attempt to fake a bank or credit card statement.

Next, examine the technical details of the file in question. Attempts at creating fake bank statements leave "fingerprints" in the metadata of the actual files. Anything from timestamps of changes to the document to records of a file passing through a program different from that of the issuing bank—as well as potentially dozens of other minor details—can mean the difference between a real bank statement and an illegitimate one. Again, these differences won't always be caught by the naked eye and require a forensic analysis of the file in question.

Below is a bank statement that has yet to be analyzed. It’s a perfect example of how nothing malicious can be seen simply by looking at the document.

Even though the bank statement looks harmless enough on the surface, the following image of the document’s analysis demonstrates just how many areas have been modified by fraudsters.

Please note: These aren’t real-life fake bank statements that we have detected; they’re recreations based on the fraud techniques described above and are for illustrative purposes only.

How can you prevent bank statement fraud?

The consequences of falling victim to bank statement fraud can be severe and far-reaching. Individuals and businesses may face financial losses, damage to their credit reputation, and legal repercussions. What’s more, the trust and credibility of financial institutions can be heavily compromised, which ultimately leads to broader implications for the overall financial landscape.

Detecting bank statement fraud requires a well-rounded combination of vigilance, awareness, and the help of fraud detection experts. Here are some key strategies for identifying and preventing bank statement fraud:

• Regularly review statements: It’s crucial that banks and fintech companies adopt a habit of regularly reviewing their bank statements. Scrutinizing transaction details, bank balances, and other relevant information can help detect discrepancies or unauthorized activities promptly.
• Educate stakeholders: Financial institutions should actively educate their customers and employees about the risks associated with bank statement fraud. Awareness campaigns can empower individuals to recognize warning signs and take preventive measures.
• Employ fraud detection solutions: Financial institutions can lean on the expertise of fraud detection analysts who use machine learning and AI to analyze patterns and detect anomalies in transaction data with holistic bank statement fraud detection solutions. By using the right combination of AI classifiers, the ability to find unknown and unusual crimes, and coherent alerts that are sent to analysts and investigators, these systems can help identify unusual activities associated with bank statements and advise organizations on what needs to be changed.

Bank statement fraud poses a significant threat in today's digital financial landscape. Fraudsters continue to evolve their tactics, making it imperative for individuals, businesses, and financial institutions to stay vigilant and proactive in their efforts to detect and prevent such fraudulent activities. By implementing a bank statement fraud detection solution that stops bad actors at the source with AI, your organization can fortify its defenses against bank statement fraud and contribute to a more secure financial landscape.

Resistant AI detects fraud in bank statements by evaluating more than 500 characteristics that are invisible to the human eye. When examining a file, we automatically check document types, author, program, device, logos, layouts, fonts, internal structure, user and file metadata, and history, amongst other elements. In the case of images, we analyze flash reflections as well as instances of blurriness or low resolution. We also carry out document comparisons (e.g. identical bank statements from varied sources, similar alterations from template farms, and so on).

Our solution can be deployed manually to immediately start detecting fraud in seconds and bring back confidence to investigators, or deployed as an API in an automation workflow to reduce manual reviews altogether.

Has your organization dealt with bank statement fraud before? If so, how were you able to spot the fake bank statement that you encountered?