Banks are vulnerable to fraud losses, Meese said.

Despite efforts to combat the problem, the nation’s financial institutions remained vulnerable to enormous losses through insider fraud and misconduct, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese told a meeting of the Interagency Bank Fraud Enforcement Working Group. In 1985, the FBI completed about 7,000 bank fraud and embezzlement investigations involving losses of $841 million, while losses for the first half of 1986 alone were $894 million, he said. The FBI had some 2,500 pending bank fraud cases involving losses of $100,000 or more in September, 1985, and 3,000 such cases pending last June.