Dear User,

The Federal Bureau of Investigation thanks you for your interest in the Fraud Alert poster. This poster addresses five different scams that have grown at an alarming rate, due in part to the explosive growth and use of the internet. Specifically, this poster addresses the Internet Fraudulent Check Scam, Foreign Lottery Scam, Nigerian Fraud Scam, Re-Shippers Facilitating Illicit Money Transfers, and the Phishing Scam. The poster can also address these scams used in combination or in tandem. Many of these scams are perpetrated by foreign individuals and originate outside the United States. These individuals hide behind the anonymity of the internet and the inherent logistical and cultural barriers facing U.S. law enforcement in coordinating with foreign law enforcement to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Because law enforcement has difficulty addressing all, or even the majority of these cases, the FBI has pursued a proactive effort to educate the public and assist financial institutions. Simply put, the intent of the poster is to prevent transactions stemming from these scams from ever being processed and to prevent citizens from falling victim to these scams. To accomplish this, the poster offers thought provoking questions designed to trigger conversation between financial institution personnel and customers. The answers to these questions should help to discern if the suspicious transaction is the product of a scam.

This Web page provides links to files for professionally printing the poster, for printing a statement stuffer version of the poster, and for posting the poster on your website. The professionally printed poster is 12" X 15" and was designed to be displayed on the teller line and at convenience tables where items such as deposit tickets are completed. It is the FBI's position that posting the poster on a bulletin board will not be effective. If desired, please feel free to add your organizational logo to the poster. The recommended location for your organization's logo is in the upper left corner of the poster. The FBI requires that you do NOT change any of the wording on the poster. Please feel free to duplicate this CD or forward a copy to other financial institutions.

It is the position of the FBI that the poster be incorporated in teller training and that each teller possess a letter size copy of the poster at their teller station. For a variety of reasons, some customers may not notify or be reluctant to notify branch personnel about suspicious transactions. For that very reason, if a teller suspects a customer could answer "Yes" to any of the questions on the poster, the teller should be encouraged to notify branch management BEFORE processing the transaction. Again, the goal of this poster is to educate customers and to prevent transactions stemming from these scams from being processed.

The poster was not designed as a means to generate case referrals to law enforcement. Financial Institutions and/or customers who have suffered a loss are encouraged to report the loss to law enforcement. One avenue is the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center website. Another avenue is a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR).

All the FBI requests is that it be notified, preferably by e-mail, when the poster played a role in preventing a financial loss. The e-mails can be short and as simple as telling us the amount of a check that was not processed because it stemmed from the Internet Fraudulent Check Scam. Or, the

e-mail may simply advise the FBI of the amount a customer did not send out of the country because the customer was alerted to a Foreign Lottery Scam. Please email this information to fraudposterfeedback@ic.fbi.gov. This email address is for feedback only and not for case referrals.

Again, the FBI thanks you for your interest and hopes the poster will help prevent financial loss to you and your customers.

These posters have been created by the FBI to provide critical information about scamming and fraud devices used by criminals. Here are the ways to utilize these files.

1. Fraud Alert 8x10 PDF - Will open in Acrobat Reader, a common software package. It may be printed directly to a color or black/white printer for reproduction and will fit in a letter size envelope for mailing.

2. Fraud Alert JPG - Is compatible with both Mac and PC computers and is easily printed.

3. Fraud Alert PDF - Is a color separated file 12" x 15" for four color process printing. If you wish a larger size poster this will be the one produced by a printshop.

4. The file fraud.zip contains a folder with an html page and associated files meant to be placed on a website. It uses a rollover image to introduce the file, which when tapped will show the poster on line.

We hope you find this a worthwhile and beneficial way to disseminate these important issues to your clients.