Where there's a will, there's a way for bandits to attempt to swindle assets from innocent victims.

In an effort to avoid that pitfall, tips on retail fraud and how to prevent it were shared recently with members of the Palmerton Area Chamber of Commerce.Todd M. Pritchard, vice president, cash management, of National Penn of Bethlehem, told Chamber members detecting and fighting payment fraud is of primary concern."It's more prevalent nowadays," Pritchard said. "In areas like Palmerton and other areas I cover, it's more of a community feel."Pritchard said check fraud is the most prevalent type of payment fraud, and costs American businesses up to $14 billion annually."If you're in the computer to pay bills, be very careful where you're at, because hackers are redirecting you to a site that looks exactly like the one where you're supposed to be," he said. "They take down your password."Pritchard said the average fraud scheme goes undetected for about 18 months.The most common types of check fraud are forgery, counterfeiting, alteration, paperhanging and check kiting, he said.Electronic fraud typically occurs over unauthorized ACH transactions, and corporate account takeovers, said Pritchard, who added that phishing, pharming and Spyware are the most common ways that login credentials are often obtained."There's becoming more and more of a split between customers and financial institutions," he said. "I highly recommend everyone use some kind of online banking."Pritchard said a specific case of electronic banking occurred in Western Beaver County, whereby criminals transferred $700,000 from school district accounts to accounts out of the country.He suggested customers use a dedicated PC for ACH transactions, but not for email, web browsing, or any use other than banking.Pritchard also encouraged the implementation of dual control for transactions; to check account activity daily; to keep virus protection up to date; monitor employee usage of email and Internet; use hard tokens at the time of log in and transaction initiation; and utilize an online fraud detection system such as Positive Pay.Positive Pay was rolled out in March and works when a customer uploads a file to the Positive Pay system. The file contains the check issue date, serial number and dollar amount, he said.Next, the system compares the checks presented against the uploaded files; and if the data matches, the items will automatically be paid, Pritchard said. In the event the data does not match, an exception will be generated from the Positive Pay system, and the customer will then have the ability to make a decision to pay or return the item.How Positive Pay for ACH works is that rules are established by the customers, and the Positive Pay system will then compare all of the ACH transaction rules to the ACH items presented.The system will then generate a list of exception items for the customer to review. The customer will then determine if these items should be paid.Benefits associated with Positive Pay are that it serves as an inexpensive fraud detection tool; it detects fraud at posting and handles within regulatory time frames; saves time by reviewing only the exception items instead of all items; has the ability to make pay/return decisions online; and has additional reporting available.