System for detecting counterfeit financial card fraud

US6094643A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Card Alert Services, Inc. · US

Inventors

• Douglas Anderson · Marshall, US
• Michael Urban · Commugny, CH
• Eric L. Deterding · Alexandria, US
• Richard H. Urban · Alexandria, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Mar 12, 1999
• Grant date: Jul 25, 2000
• Expiry date: Mar 12, 2019

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G07F7/08
• WIPO field: IT methods for management
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Counterfeit financial card fraud is detected based on the premise that the fraudulent activity will reflect itself in clustered groups of suspicious transactions. A system for detecting financial card fraud uses a computer database comprising financial card transaction data reported from a plurality of financial institutions. The transactions are scored by assigning weights to individual transactions to identify suspicious transactions. The geographic region where the transactions took place as well as the time of the transactions are recorded. An event building process then identifies cards involved in suspicious transactions in a same geographic region during a common time period to determine clustered groups of suspicious activity suggesting an organized counterfeit card operation which would otherwise be impossible for the individual financial institutions to detect.