Fingerprinting Hailed in Fight Against Fraud

IRVINE — When David Theodore Wolfe walked into the Great Western Bank on Barranca Parkway to cash a $225 check this year, he left behind a clue that eventually landed him in jail on suspicion of forgery.

The clue was a fingerprint on a personal check.

Such fingerprinting has been required by hundreds of bank branches statewide for check-writing customers who do not have accounts with them. Scores of businesses in eight Orange County cities also require a thumbprint with each check under a police initiative launched last year aimed at deterring fraud.

So far, at least a dozen arrests have resulted from the program.

Law enforcement officials are hailing the system as a weapon against check fraud that surpasses even the driver’s license, which in the age of computers has become a cinch to counterfeit. Pointing to Wolfe’s arrest and other evidence such as a decline in financial losses among banks with the program, police said there’s plenty of proof that the initiative works.

But the idea has been criticized by privacy rights groups and some merchants, who say it might drive away customers.

Obtaining fingerprints “would be offensive to customers,” said Linda Smith, owner of RUF, an Irvine furniture store. “It’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

Other critics fear the fingerprints “could fall into the wrong hands” and be used to extract personal information such as a credit record without the person’s permission, said Pamela Pressley, consumer advocate for the California Public Interest Research Group in Mar Vista.

Anaheim Police Det. Werner R. Raes acknowledged the program is taking longer to grab hold than he anticipated, mainly because of resistance from merchants.

“I think there’s a stigma attached to fingerprints,” Raes said. “There’s still a reluctance of merchants from what they perceive to be a possibility of offending customers.”

Last year, police departments in eight cities proposed that banks and businesses, on a voluntary basis, fingerprint check-writing customers. The cities are Irvine, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Fountain Valley, Cypress, Garden Grove, Brea and Buena Park.

The program has caught the attention of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which is trying to determine whether to implement it, Raes said. Other states including Texas, Idaho and Colorado have begun similar programs.

Businesses who go to the police and sign up for such programs use an pad of invisible ink to get a thumbprint, usually placed on the front of the check near the signature. The print is submitted to investigators only when a crime is suspected; otherwise, the check goes back to customers or is destroyed.

Police dismissed fears that the fingerprint could be misused. Even if someone gets hold of the print, there’s not much that can be done with it, they say.

About the only way to match an inked print with a name is to run it through an FBI system, which is accessible only to law enforcement, not the public, police said.

“There’s more harm to be done with a driver’s license number than a fingerprint,” said Irvine Police Sgt. Phil Povey.

In recent years, computers have made it easy to counterfeit official documents such as checks, driver’s licenses and even property titles, prompting some businesses and law enforcement to turn to fingerprints to ensure the legitimacy of those documents. Fingerprints already are required on many legal documents, including deeds.

Fraudulent checks cost California banks alone about $65 million a year, according to a 1995 survey, said John Stafford, spokesman for the California Bankers Assn. Nationwide, losses are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Informal studies by banks show a reduction at branches where fingerprints are required, Stafford said. At Bank of America branches in Las Vegas, a pilot program resulted in a 40% reduction in losses from fraudulent checks. The bank plans to expand the practice, which officials said is primarily a deterrent, to branches nationwide.

Anaheim police say they have been able to identify the signers of at least 80% of forged, fingerprinted checks, resulting in about 10 convictions so far, Raes said.

In Irvine, the first person arrested because of the program was Wolfe, 30, a repeat offender who cashed a $225 check, stolen from a mailbox, at the Great Western Bank, police said. His fingerprint on that check helped authorities capture him when he tried to pass another stolen check in Laguna Niguel, Povey said.

Even with those results, few merchants are rushing to join the program, which costs them between $2 and $6 for an ink pad.

Among banks that have such a program in place, the amount of money lost to bad checks has declined by 40% to 75%, according to studies by several banks in Nevada and Texas.

“It’s a solid deterrent and great after-the-fact evidence for the police,” Stafford said. “We have promoted it to banks. [Fingerprints] are becoming more and more of a mainstream form of identification.”

National banks including the Bank of America, Great Western and Wells Fargo Bank require fingerprints for check-writing customers who don’t have accounts with the banks. Comp-USA started a pilot program in four of their 127 stores, said Carol Elfstrom, spokeswoman for the store.

Investigators in several cities regularly give seminars to Chamber of Commerce members and talk to business owners who have asked them to investigate fraudulent checks. Some police departments also have window stickers and flyers for merchants to display in hopes of allaying consumer skepticism.

Not everyone is convinced.

Margaret Pardee, 55, of Costa Mesa, said although she has a good credit record, she would think twice about giving a thumbprint to write a check.

“It’s a little intrusive,” Pardee said. “I mean, it feels physically intrusive in a way. It’s like they’re asking for a piece of your body.”