The Merchant Risk Council (MRC) has announced the final agenda for its upcoming annual conference being held March 22-24 at the Wynn Las Vegas Resort. The organization will also announced the results of three new studies at the conference - a new MRC Payment Security Survey, the Annual MRC Fraud Survey, and a new Payments Benchmarking Survey.

Conference keynote speakers Include Harry Markopolos (financial fraud investigator), Andreas Weigend (former Amazon.com chief scientist), and Joseph Menn (author of "Fatal System Error").

U.S. Retail merchants incurred more than $139 billion in fraud losses over the past year, according to a new study released by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. The study revealed that for every $100 in fraudulent transactions, retailers incurred $310 in total losses, including costs associated with replacing lost or stolen merchandise. Additionally, the study found that consumer victims of retail fraud incurred $5.5 billion in costs stemming from un-reimbursed losses, legal fees and other factors. While fraud is a $100 billion problem for retail merchants, fraud losses decreased by 25% when compared to 2009.

Charles Jester has an interesting article in SC Magazine entitled "Cybercrime Fact or Fiction, Part 1: Banking Trojans and FinCEN Reporting" looking at the wide discrepancies in how payments fraud is reported. As Jester dryly points out "most statistics on cybercrime range from under $300 million lost per year to over $48 billion lost per year."

Deteriorating financial conditions in 2008 coupled with the emergence of new payments types and the growth of electronic payments opened up new opportunities for payment fraud, according to the 2009 AFP Payments and Fraud Control Survey. According to AFP, "the assault on payments is widespread: over seventy percent of organizations surveyed experienced attempted or actual payments fraud in 2008." The survey was sponsored by J.P. Morgan Treasury Services. READ MORE »