by Deanna Boyd
ABSTRACT - The theft of a box of checks from a Fort Worth woman's mailbox began the crime spree. The thief began cashing the checks at a local bank for up to $300 at a time. A flash of a driver's license stolen from another woman served as the passport to newfound income. Fort Worth fraud Detective H. D. Murtaugh said the thief's transgressions may have gone uninterrupted had a bank employee not been alert enough to require the woman to provide a fingerprint.
Detectives are powerless to fight check fraud without fingerprints. Just between January and August of 2002 check fraud cost Fort Worth merchants $2.7 million. Murtaugh said "...the merchant has a responsibility to protect himself...he's asking for a fingerprint and giving us a tool to work with."
The Fort Worth police department will host fingerprint education sessions for merchants and financial institutions. Among those present at this week's session is Lydia del Rossi, president and co-founder of CrimeBite, a South Carolina-based company that markets Authentiprint, an identification system that enables retailers to chemically capture a consumer's fingerprint signature without requiring the use of colored ink.
In its 6 years operation, del Rossi said, the company's system is in some 4000 corporate locations in almost 30 states and has helped facilitate more than 800 felony convictions.
In the first 8 months of this year, Fort Worth police received 3442 fraud cases, 1565 of which involved check fraud.
While the bank or merchant swallows the cost, Murtaugh said, it is consumers who in the end suffer when those losses are passed on through higher prices.