County looking into fraudulent check activity
By Chris Fortune
Buchanan County is receiving help from law enforcement officials to find who is issuing checks made to look like they are from the county.
The county treasurer’s office reconciles checks from the bank every day and noticed some of the checks this month did not match its reports. County fraud protection measures prevented the fake checks from affecting its budget.
“We determined that these were fraudulent checks, so we quickly called the bank, we notified the bank, all the safeguards that we had in place worked perfectly,” Treasurer Dave Gall said.
The main safeguard the county uses is Positive Pay, which is a security measure that banks have in place to protect checks and electronic fund transfers. Part of the process is cross-referencing checks and account numbers.
“It’s funny because (the fraudulent checks) all look the same,” he said. “They have a different name, but they all have the same scratch signature, and they all have similar amounts, which is very, very weird.”
A bank employee who formerly worked with the U.S. Secret Service put Gall in contact with a current Secret Service employee at its Kansas City field office, and they discussed the fraudulent check activity on Tuesday.
Gall sent the fraudulent checks to the Secret Service, but it may not yield a thorough investigation since the county did not lose any money.
“The Secret Service person told me that until it’s a couple hundred thousand dollars or something like that, it’s not a real threat,” Gall said.
As the Secret Service begins its investigation, the fraudulent checks continue to appear. Another showed up in Gall’s report Tuesday.
“It’s not affecting any of the citizens because we haven’t lost (money), but it’s just scary because I would think that somebody is smart enough to get through,” Gall said.
