Hawk, an AI-powered fraud detection platform, has partnered with Mitek to deliver a solution helping financial institutions identify and block altered, forged, or counterfeit checks in real time.
The partnership combines Mitek’s patented image forensics and consortium intelligence with Hawk’s AI-powered precision and self-serve rule management. In a conversation published by Hawk, Hrishi Talwar, its vice president of product, fraud, sat down with Mitek senior business intelligence and strategy manager Derek Abbott to explore how check fraud has evolved and where current prevention technologies are falling short.
Abbott painted a picture of a threat that has grown significantly in scale and sophistication. Fraud rings now exploit institutional silos to redeposit stolen checks across multiple banks within hours, while generative AI tools are enabling fraudsters to produce near-perfect counterfeit checks. Most legacy systems, he argued, were simply not built for this environment, lacking real-time decisioning, cross-channel visibility, and the consortium intelligence needed to spot coordinated attacks.
Mitek’s consortium spans demand deposit accounts from more than 8,300 US financial institutions, covering all deposit channels and storing verified customer check profiles to enable comparisons against known non-fraudulent items — going well beyond the metadata-sharing of traditional consortiums.
Mitek senior business intelligence and strategy manager Derek Abbott said, “Fraudsters collaborate; banks must too. Shared intelligence means a check flagged at one institution can be immediately recognized at another, closing the window for redeposit schemes and cross-institution attacks. Without consortium data, you’re fighting fraud with one hand tied behind your back.”
Looking ahead, Abbott described a future where fraud prevention shifts from reactive detection to anticipatory defence, with always-on intelligence networks, deeper integration of compromised data intelligence, and explainable AI providing transparent reasoning behind alerts.
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