NEW ORLEANS—As headlines warn of deepfakes, AI voice clones and synthetic account takeovers, a quieter threat is walking through credit unions’ front doors.
Despite the financial services industry’s intense focus on digital fraud, in-branch fraud is rising in 2025 — and many credit unions may not fully grasp the scale of the exposure, according to Jillian Kossman, COO of IDScan.net, which provides identity verification technology to banks and credit unions.
“Roughly 50% of the fraud we’re seeing is still happening in branch using stolen identities and fake IDs,” Kossman said. “There’s been so much investment in digital account opening and digital account takeover prevention. That same level of attention hasn’t been paid to the branch.”
Kossman said IDScan’s data show a noticeable uptick in fraud attempts in 2025 compared with 2024, following a smaller increase the prior year. The trend, she noted, often moves countercyclical to the broader economy.
“When the economy tightens, when people have less money in their wallet and the price of goods is going up, that’s when we see fraud skyrocket,” she said. And while digital threats dominate conference agendas, “IRL — in real life — is still many banks’ and credit unions’ biggest threat vector.”
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