Report: Losses from synthetic fraud are expected to double to nearly $5 billion by 2024

Synthetic identity fraud has taken the United States by storm by storm over the past 20 years, and are expected to generate nearly $5 billion in financial losses by 2024. Synthetic Fraud is no longer a surprise attack on America’s financial and commercial systems – while the earliest fraudulent identities were completely bogus and many of the patterns used to establish synthetic identities at an early stage are still in use today. Fortunately, the patterns of synthetic fraud are well understood and the profiles of engineered and fabricated subtypes have been teased out, which will help stop synthetic fraud in its tracks.

Socure’s recent report examined years of tagged fabricated synthetic fraud data to identify patterns by name, demographics, habits, location and other behaviors to help organizations identify and combat synthetic fraud.

Analyzing the patterns for first and last names, it noted common choices, leading the company to believe bad actors strategically create synthetic identities to blend in with the populace. The goal of “merging into” doesn’t stop at names. It’s a trait also shared by the rest of the patterns associated with these fabricated synthetic identities, including age, location, whereabouts, and more.

By combining the most popular first name for synthetic identities with the most popular last name for synthetic identities, we have determined the most common full name for synthetic identities: Michael Smith.

Synthetic fraud will continue to plague the industry for years to come. The only way to fully solve synthetic fraud is for an industry to work together to stop the damage that bad actors are doing to consumers and our financial system.

Read the full report from Socure.