Letter to the Editor:
I must take exception to your recent lead article "If you think MICR Readers Stop Fraud Think Again".
MICR readers do stop fraud, still they are only part of a system. If the Griffin family hit merchants that were using a good check verifications system such as ETC SCAN data base, they would have been stopped early in their run.
Your endorsement of the drivers license as a vehicle to prevent check fraud is a bit foolish in that I'm sure the Griffin family drove from merchant to merchant and had a pocket full of fake drivers' licenses.
I believe your article should have read "If you think Drivers License Stop Fraud, Think Again". It would be interesting to know how many of the merchants taken actually had a MICR reader at their POS and how many used a verification system. My guess is less than 10% based on the number of check readers in Merchant locations.
Don't shoot the check reader when the merchant continues to use poor data bases or takes a check from any one because it is guaranteed. Please explain to me how the driver's license would have prevented these losses where a check reader with a good data base would have failed.
Larry N. Schroeder
President, Stone-West Inc.
The Green Sheet:
Two of the locations at which the Griffin family wrote significant bad checks, were Major Grocery stores using the SCAN data base. We were also told that one of the Chicago General retail locations was using an Access I MICR terminal.
The point of the story, however, was that the authorities noted the frequency with which the family members were not asked for any ID, even though as you suggested, they had opened bank accounts in 25 different names.
The proliferation of home made checks, with good bank account numbers lifted from other consumers checking accounts, suggest that the MICR number is certainly not a good ID.
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