Fraudulent class actions and mass tort claims are rampant, while digital payments are fast becoming more common for claim disbursement, according to the “2024 Digital Payments in Class Actions and Mass Torts” report by Western Alliance Bank and its wholly owned subsidiary digital payments platform Digital Disbursements.
The report, which pulled data from 597 class action and mass tort distributions from 24 settlement administrators between 2019 and 2023, found that the number of claims with significant indicia of fraud skyrocketed 400% to over 80 million in 2023, from just under two million in 2022. Compared to the 421,000 or so claims with significant indicia of fraud in 2021, there was an increase of 19,000% over two years.