Local Publishing Company

When a local publishing company discovered a series of fraud attempts on their bank accounts, they called on the North Shore Bank Cash Management team for reinforcement. See how Vice President, Cash Management Officer Dan Sousa helped them unlock their fraud prevention potential—and stop additional fraud in its tracks.

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Like many businesses, a local publishing company nearly found out the hard way that criminals’ growing sophistication can lead to new chapters on fraud. In one two-day span, the company was the victim of both a fake check-cashing attempt and a fake ACH withdrawal attempt. If not for astute North Shore Bank staff who spotted the fraud before funds ever left the account, their fraud story could have had a very different ending with nearly $40,000 in losses for this small business—not a storyline they wanted to risk experiencing again. So, they turned to Vice President, Cash Management Officer Dan Sousa to help them leverage the power of North Shore Bank’s advanced fraud prevention tools.

As Dan pointed out, scenarios like these are typically just the beginning of the story:  Once an account number is compromised, it can cause a flood of fraud attempts using other types of scenarios—some of which aren’t so easily spotted and can lead to significant loss of funds. However, the typical solution of closing the account and opening a new one would bring an administrative burden that this publisher wanted to avoid. That’s when Dan suggested Positive Pay.

North Shore Bank’s Check Positive Pay and ACH Positive Pay offer a powerful combination of tools that work in tandem to help prevent unauthorized transactions. Check Positive Pay automatically compares checks issued to those presented against the account and flags unmatched items—including those presented at the teller line—with full customer control on whether flagged items are paid or returned. Likewise, ACH Positive Pay monitors and reviews ACH debits and credits and allows customer action on suspicious items to ensure only valid transactions are cleared. Both, Check and ACH Positive Pay are integrated with eBusiness Solutions to provide a single login.

With Positive Pay, the client rewrote their fraud prevention story and was able to add advanced and powerful tools that one principal said “simply prevents illegal activity from succeeding.” Not even a week later, Positive Pay stopped an additional $30,000 in attempted fraudulent transactions on the same accounts!

“I would recommend [Positive Pay] to every business. With it, I rest easy and can concentrate on business development without the worry and fear of stealthy, unknown crooks,” he said.

If your business needs one-on-one guidance and support on risk mitigation with effective fraud prevention solutions, call Vice President, Cash Management Officer Dan Sousa at 877.380.2265 or email him at .