Fraud in the News

Data breaches increase merchant losses

According to the new "True Cost of Fraud" study by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, retailers lost, on average, .68 percent of their revenue to fraud in 2014, up from .51 percent in 2013. Thanks to a string of data breaches at major merchants — like Target and Home Depot — retailers are seeing fraud take a significantly bigger chunk out of their profits.

"The average merchant suffered 133 successful fraudulent transactions per month, up 46 percent from last year," writes NBC News staff reporter Herb Weisbaum in his Sept. 29 article. LexisNexis says the spike in fraud is driven by the massive number of credit and debit card numbers compromised in recent data breaches and the growth in mobile shopping.

"Fraud has been going up the last few years, but this was a really big jump — both in the amount of revenue lost to fraud and the sheer number of fraud attempts," says Aaron Press, a fraud expert at LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

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