Who are the perpetrators of phantom withdrawals?
Three explanations seem immediately plausible to explain any phantom withdrawal: • The first, and simplest, is known as “first party fraud”. This is where the customer is attempting to commit a fraud against the bank, by falsely disputing some transactions that he, she or an accomplice actually made. • The second possibility is that a criminal or organised gang has managed to collect both the customer’s card information, and his or her PIN. However, when we classify phantom withdrawals, we try to ensure that no criminal method already known to us could clearly explain the withdrawals. • The third and rarest possibility is that the withdrawal was made as result of a more sophisticated attack, for instance in co-operation with an insider at the bank who has access to customer account and PIN information. The hardest to resolve phantoms often come down to deciding between the relative chances of insider attack at the bank versus first party fraud by the customer.
