From Bazooka to Fake Nikes

**Executive Summary:** Business impersonation is driving a resurgence of commercial check fraud and a large increase in AI-powered online shopping scams; fraudsters exploit gaps across business registries, merchant onboarding, payment networks, and social-ad ecosystems to create fake companies and merchant accounts, advertise bogus deals, and cash out authorized payments. The report highlights examples (including a $1.24M check diversion), marketplace evidence (stolen checks and fake merchants observed for sale), and recommends mitigations such as Positive Pay/Reverse Positive Pay, stronger merchant and ad vetting, and CTI–fraud fusion to better detect and disrupt these schemes.