Fraud follows chaos. And the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) implosion kicked off a wave of identity fraud attacks.

Mike Cook, posted a research blog that found close to a 500% increase in third-party identity fraud attempts against small business banks on March 10th – just days before SVB was shuttered.

Read the blog here – SVB and Signature Bank Failure Cause Unusual Spikes In Identity Fraud.

They Analyzed Fraud Patterns And Saw Spikes in Realtime

According to Cook, Socure “conducted an analysis of fraud patterns across our 1,500+ customers inclusive of the largest banks and fintech in the market. We have seen a spike in third-party and synthetic identity fraud attempts for small business banking and investment platforms”

The burst of identity fraud attempts were seen in their realtime Sigma scoring application which monitors fraud in realtime

Cook says the wave of attacks was directly aimed at investment and small-business banking industries and was directly related to the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank.

The identity attacks started immediately before SVB was closed – indicating that the fraudsters saw an opportunity as the uncertainty in the industry developed.

Some of The Attacks Originated From China

One of the more unusual indicators in the attacks show a flood of identity fraud attempts originating from China.

According to Johnny Ayers, CEO of Socure, “In the attacks, we spotted a flood of the same U.S. phone number used from China, linked to hundreds of applications with stolen identities. When that number was blocked, the attackers changed it up to create new VOIP phones for each application.”

Very interesting analysis out of Socure this weekend!