Search: the nation's leading fraud database.(extra credit)

As a credit professional, what would you expect from a database to prevent fraud? NACM's Asset Protection Group (APG) possesses a one-of-a-kind fraud database--SEARCH. Containing decades of independently verified fraudulent activity and information, SEARCH is the ultimate fraud prevention tool for the credit professional.

APG provides a membership network dedicated to assisting our members with detecting and deterring business credit fraud. As a benefit of your APG membership, the SEARCH database is accessible 24/7. Although APG was an established division of NACM well before the 1980s, the database has been re-structured to contain fraud reports from the 1980s to the present to allow faster searches and the most up-to-date results.

The relationship between law enforcement and APG has been a crucial aspect of the database. All information in the SEARCH database is independently verified, including businesses suspected of fraudulent activity that have been reported amongst NACM and/or APG members, as well as law enforcement. Factual information is a must--integrity is everything! Thorough investigations of cases are conducted before full reports are published online to provide as many facts as possible to assist members with learning a little more about their potential business partners.

What would make your screening process easier, and how can APG help? We asked many of our members this question before completely revamping our database a few years ago. Members can now perform searches by principal name, company address, company name, phone number, state, zip code and much more! This is a wonderful feature allowing the option to search with various criteria suitable to the member. APG reports, law enforcement alerts, drop-ship locations and aliases of principals and businesses are just a few pieces of information that can be found in the SEARCH database.

You have a credit application fresh in from your sales department to review. Wouldn't it be wonderful if your screening process could start or end with a simple search on APG's database? For instance, you enter the telephone number provided on that new credit application into the SEARCH database and get a hit. It reveals that the phone number is the exact same phone number used by a company with a different name than your new applicant; however, it mentions the same accounts payable representative that has initialized your order. You return to the main screen to search by the name of the accounts payable representative because now you are intrigued. Bingo! You further discover that this accounts payable representative is the subject of a law enforcement investigation and is linked to two previous APG reports. It is not guaranteed that every subject that has conducted a fraudulent scheme of is suspected of fraudulent activity is in the SEARCH database; however, the activities reported to APG by members, nonmembers and law enforcement will ...