SANTA CLARA, Calif.–APL Federal Credit Union is reporting it was able to prevent an $80,000 wire fraud attempt by using its video banking system to verify a suspicious transaction, protecting a member who had already lost more than $1.2 million to fraud at another financial institution, it said.
According to Eltropy Video Banking, which provides the solution, the fraud attempt began when a wire transfer request for $80,000 appeared in APL FCU’s online system with what appeared to be legitimate documentation.
“A payment support specialist noticed the wire was going to an individual rather than a title company and initiated a verification call,” the company reported. “When the voice didn’t match the member’s profile and the caller resisted video verification, the credit union froze the wire.”
Member Confirms He Was Victim
According to Eltorpy, three days later, the actual member called APL FCU and confirmed he had been the victim of a $1.2 million wire fraud at a separate institution. He lauded APL FCU’s security measures for acting as a critical final line of defense, keeping his remaining funds secure during the multi-institution attack, the company said.
Video Verification as Standard Practice
The $700-million APL FCU, which has 31,000 members and serves The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, reported that it implemented risk-based video verification with Eltropy Video Banking as part of its fraud prevention strategy.
“One of the rules we implemented when we took on the video portion of Eltropy was: any wires over a certain monetary amount to a third-party beneficiary will always require video verification,” Denise Webster, accounting manager at APL FCU, said in a statement. “This approach doesn’t force staff to justify every video verification request; the policy does that for them.”
Two to Three Minutes
According to Eltropy, the video verification process takes two to three minutes but creates what fraudsters view as an insurmountable barrier. “At the end of the day, we’re protecting our members and the credit union from loss,” Webster said. “Once the money is gone from a wire or Zelle transaction, it’s gone.”
APL FCU said its staff have become advocates for video verification at industry conferences, sharing first-hand information about scenarios where the credit union has caught potential losses and how the additional layer of security protects members.
