Criminals use Telegram to recruit ‘walkers’ as America’s big banks see an 84% increase in check fraud

While other mainstream platforms, including WhatsApp and Facebook, also have been exploited by criminals for illicit purposes, many of those apps regulate their content more carefully than Telegram, Noriega said. On platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook, users can more easily report posts and groups for illicit activity and they are generally removed faster than on Telegram, making it more difficult for fraudsters to advertise and communicate there, she said.

“Telegram is unfortunately a source for all things check fraud,” Noriega said. “It’s unfortunately turned into a one-stop shop for everything that you need to do to successfully take a check, to make counterfeit and deposit it.”

Check washing schemes can happen one of two ways: Criminals can steal checks out of mailboxes and physically erase the name of the payee using technology like photoshop and replace it with a bogus identity and deposit it into their account or they can take or create counterfeit checks under a real account number and deposit it under a fake identity.

Noriega said she’s seen people boast on Telegram that they have contacts inside some banks who’ve shared customer account balance and other information to ensure the checks that get cashed don’t bounce.

Many of the chats show so-called walkers disguising their identity at hair salons while others seek accomplices to help carry out the elaborate scams. Some of the messages reviewed by CNBC advertise specific services: “If you need a male walker PM us.” Another posting was offering $350 for someone to cash a fake check at a bank.

In criminal slang, “walks” are trips to the bank to cash those bogus checks. “Walkers” are the people who are hired to physically enter the banks to commit the fraud, taking a brunt of the risk in the scheme.

The elderly and homeless often serve as walkers because they’ll frequently execute the crime for a low payout and bank tellers are less likely to question the credibility of an elderly person, according to Benda.

So-called brokers are one rung above walkers in the hierarchy of a criminal enterprise. They organize groups of walkers to go into banks, selecting them for age, race and gender, to be able to plausibly match the names on the checks they are cashing. To help with appearances, some of those brokers buy outfits for their walkers, or take them to the hair salon for a quick trim and color.

Those brokers, in turn, sell the walkers’ services to other criminals who steal physical checks from the U.S. mail – including sometimes brazen thefts from blue postal boxes, home mailboxes and even apartment building mailrooms. The stolen paper checks are “washed,” or forged, to change the name of the recipient and the amount on the face of the check. 

Using a fake identity, the walkers provide a combination of real and false personal information to open a bank account and prevent law enforcement officials from tracing the account to a specific person.

A freewheeling criminal bazaar on check washing flourishes in online chat rooms on Telegram: Brokers compete to offer services, using photos to advertise how credible their walkers are. They also post videos of themselves paying walkers in stacks of cash, in order to entice more walkers to work with them. And they brag when they’ve successfully ripped someone off, posting bank slips purporting to show deposits and withdrawals in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Noriega said it can be difficult for banks to flag some large deposits as abnormal because criminals develop a similar transaction history over a long period of time to make the accounts appear legitimate.

Noriega said in many of these cases, tellers can identify check walkers because they’ll come in pairs – with a broker watching from afar as the walker approaches the counter and deposits a large check. In some cases, walkers wear earbuds, Noriega said, enabling the broker to listen in on the transaction and feed account information to the walker in real time.

Paper checks have been in use in the West since the 1400s, and from the very beginning, bankers have been concerned about check fraud.

In fact, in 1526 the city of Venice, Italy, banned checks outright because fraud was so rampant. But of course, that ban didn’t last — checks were simply too efficient to eliminate from the financial system.

Benda, of the bankers’ group, said the burden of stopping the crime too often falls to bank tellers, who aren’t always trained to stop sophisticated, organized fraud. 

“That front-line bank employee wants to provide a good customer service,” Benda said. “They’ve got a customer presenting that looks like the customer’s supposed to look, that has the proper identification and documents that are in place, and they want to provide that customer service.”

He also said Telegram has accelerated the sophistication and coordination of this crime.

“These guys have gotten really good at eliminating that signature and putting in a new signature,” said Benda. “Gotten good at getting the fake IDs. I mean, they’re hiring people off the street and then making them look pretty.”