Responding to a Third-Party Fraud Claim
Report fraudulent payroll claims efficiently by collecting key information and notifying Check immediately.
Occasionally, you may receive outreach from a company that claims to have been debited for a payroll even though they never signed up for your payroll product. This company likely has seen a line item on their bank statement that they do not recognize, which mentions payroll and your company name.
Companies whose bank accounts have been compromised could be the victim of a fraud scheme. It is possible that a bad actor provided stolen bank account information when they onboarded and then ran a fraudulent payroll. It also is possible that the individual calling you is part of the fraud or knows more about what is happening than they are disclosing. For example, they may have willingly shared their bank account information with a bad actor or have knowledge of who compromised the account and now intend to demand that Check refund the money, which has already been diverted, leading Check to lose the funds if we cooperate.
If you receive such a call, please collect the following information and notify Check immediately via Zendesk:
- Date of the debit
- Amount of the debit
- Transaction number
- Transaction descriptor on bank statement
- Bank name and last 4 digits of the account number
- Name of the caller and the company associated with the bank account (name and address)
- If they are comfortable providing it, the phone number of the caller
Once Check receives this information from you, our Risk Operations team will investigate the company that ran the payroll and will immediately terminate them and cancel all future transactions if there is sufficient evidence of fraud. If the completed transaction is within the 5-day ACH return window, we also will attempt to reverse the transaction.
Because there is no way for you or Check to vet the caller’s statements, it is important not to provide the caller with additional assistance or information. Please let the caller know you will look into the issue right away but do not provide any other information about the transaction.
If the caller asks for additional help, please direct them to their bank or law enforcement for additional assistance. Banks have a process for requesting that ACH transactions be reversed due to fraud and law enforcement can use subpoenas to request additional information. Both of these resources provide an additional layer of protection against callers who may have bad intentions.
Subpoenas from law enforcement should be sent directly to subpoenas@checkhq.com. Please note that we only respond to subpoenas sent to this email address and do not monitor it for any other types of communication.
Last updated on January 31, 2025