Dealerships have always dealt with identity theft and fraudulent credit applications, but the schemes appear to be getting more sophisticated.

Stores are now watching for synthetic identities, stolen customer information, fake pay stubs, altered driver’s licenses, false employment verification, fraudulent down payments and buyers who never intended to make the first payment.

At the same time, dealerships are under pressure to make the buying process faster and complete more of the transaction remotely. Adding too many verification steps can frustrate legitimate customers, but moving too quickly can leave the dealership exposed to a major loss.

What types of fraud are you actually seeing at the store level? Who should ultimately own the verification process: sales, F&I, the lender or a dedicated compliance team?

Most importantly, how do you protect the dealership without making every legitimate customer feel like a suspect?

What is the most convincing fraudulent application your store has seen?