When you skip proper fraud prevention, you don’t save money. You just let fraudsters claim a share. In reality, every dollar "not spent" on fraud prevention is a dollar that quietly flows out of the system into the hands of people who don’t belong in it.
Fraud prevention in class action settlements should be seen as an investment in the class, not just an operational line item. For every $1 spent on fraud detection, over $20 is saved and returned to legitimate class members. It’s not about cost. It’s about fairness.
There’s a deeper layer to this equation. The financial structure of a common fund settlement typically includes attorney’s fees, case expenses, administrative costs, and the net settlement fund for class members. But without effective detection, fraud quietly emerges as another category. It’s a hidden drain on the system, diverting funds away from rightful claimants and into the hands of organized fraud operations.
The truth is, no one really knows where that money ends up. Fraudulent payments are hard to trace. What we do know is that the groups perpetrating this kind of large-scale, automated fraud aren’t lone actors. They’re sophisticated, organized, and often international. Their methods resemble the structured operations of broader cybercrime syndicates, not just opportunistic individuals.
For years, they’ve siphoned millions from class action settlements, largely unnoticed. That’s part of why fraud has grown so dramatically: the risk was low and the reward high, simply because it worked.
Let’s be clear: when a fraudulent claim gets paid, a real claimant loses.
Fraud doesn’t just skim from the top; it reduces the size of the pie for everyone else. If you believe in protecting class members, then fraud prevention isn’t just helpful. It’s essential.
Seen through this lens, fraud prevention becomes something more powerful: a transfer of wealth back to the class. Every dollar intercepted through proper analysis and rerouted away from fraudsters is returned to the people the case was built to serve.
Investing in fraud detection doesn’t take from the class. It takes from fraud. And with a return on investment that’s not just positive, but exponential, it’s a rare case where the ethical and the efficient are perfectly aligned.
Fraud in class actions isn’t new. But now it’s scaled. It’s evolved. It’s embedded itself into the system. That’s why this industry has to evolve too. No more looking the other way. No more treating prevention like a luxury.
It’s time to stop the theft and put that money back where it belongs.
Learn how ClaimScore protects settlements and returns value to real claimants with AI-driven fraud detection.
