Crowley recognized for industry-leading fraud prevention with CrowleySAFE

Crowley has been named a winner of the prestigious 2025 FreightWaves Fraud Fighter Awards, recognizing the company’s innovative approach to combating increasingly sophisticated freight fraud schemes. At the center of Crowley’s fraud-fighting strategy is CrowleySAFE (Crowley Strategic Anti-Fraud Ecosystem), a comprehensive, multi-layered solution designed to protect the freight ecosystem against evolving threats including double-brokering, identity theft, phishing attacks, and fictitious pickups.

According to Crowley, the most dangerous threat in today’s freight industry is “the rise of identity theft and synthetic carrier profiles. Fraudsters are no longer just exploiting weak vetting processes; they’re mimicking legitimate operations down to email signatures, websites and forged documents.” This sophisticated approach to fraud has fundamentally changed the industry landscape as these impersonations erode trust across the industry and make traditional verification methods inadequate and nearly obsolete.

Crowley’s approach to fraud prevention has undergone significant transformation over time. “Early on, we focused on blocking known offenders. Now, we take a proactive approach by looking for patterns, anomalies and cross-system inconsistencies before fraud occurs,” the company explained. This shift represents a fundamental change in philosophy, moving “from reactive gatekeeping to network-wide visibility and education, embedding fraud awareness into every department, from onboarding to claims.”

A cornerstone of this evolution has been industry collaboration. “A major driver of our evolution has been networking with other carriers, brokerage professionals and overall industry stakeholders,” Crowley wrote. “Being part of a community that openly shares insights, red flags and suspicious patterns has made a tremendous difference.”

CrowleySAFE leverages cutting-edge technology as a core component of its fraud prevention strategy. “The integration of tools like Carrier Assure, Highway, custom-built applications and digital sandboxing has transformed how we approach fraud prevention,” Crowley wrote. These technologies create “an anti-fraud ecosystem that allows us to quickly validate identities, flag suspicious activity and trace patterns across platforms.”

What makes Crowley’s approach particularly effective is the combination of technological tools with human intuition. As the company emphasizes, “Even more powerful is our ability to layer these external tools with internal data, creating a dynamic threat intelligence system tailored to our operations.” However, they caution that “technology alone isn’t enough. Sometimes the most effective tool is your instinct. If you pick up the phone and something feels off, don’t move forward. Trust your gut. It’s saved us more times than I can count.”

Inside CrowleySAFE: A Multi-Layered Defense System

CrowleySAFE encompasses several key components, each addressing specific vulnerabilities in the freight ecosystem:

The system integrates with Highway and Carrier Assure to score carrier risk levels using FMCSA data, performance trends, and industry behavior. For high-risk moves, Crowley implements reverse phone verification to prevent identity spoofing and phishing email impersonation. The company maintains a robust DNU (Do Not Use) list enforcement across all subsystems, with over 400 carriers added in Q4 2024 due to confirmed fraud activity.

Crowley conducts daily updates and compliance checks through RMIS to eliminate outdated COIs or fraudulent certificates. The company’s deep understanding of “industry nuances like COI delay after binding” helps detect policy red flags and backdoor fraud attempts before they materialize.

For critical loads—particularly government or high-value commodities—Crowley employs ELD visibility tools and Plaid driver verification. The company is also “piloting real-time facial recognition and license matching to validate driver identity before pickup,” further strengthening their defense against fraudulent pickups.

Crowley’s fraud prevention strategy has yielded impressive results, including a 97% reduction in unvetted carrier usage since SOP enforcement in Q3–Q4 2024. The company conducts monthly audits that ensure over 1,000+ active carriers remain compliant and continuously monitored.

Their success extends beyond internal metrics to real-world fraud prevention. The company shares a particularly noteworthy example: “We recently stopped a fake carrier from onboarding after identifying multiple red flags such as altered credentials, mismatched carrier history, suspicious email and phone changes, and inconsistencies in the certificate of insurance. By catching it early, we added them to our Do Not Use (DNU) list within minutes, preventing them from ever touching a load.”

What’s particularly notable is how Crowley leverages these incidents to strengthen the entire industry’s defenses: “I shared the intel with our carrier compliance network, enabling others to block the same so-called carrier in real time.” This collaborative approach has proven effective, as CrowleySAFE has “played a key role in preventing two six-figure theft events by flagging mismatched SCAC and driver identity prior to pickup.”

Crowley emphasizes that effective fraud prevention requires comprehensive education and training. Their approach focuses on making the training relevant and impactful: “Make it real. Show them case studies and walk them through ‘what went wrong’ scenarios. We rebuilt our fraud training with real examples such as loads that were hijacked, brokers impersonated, and driver complacency.”

This emphasis on education has created “a culture where vigilance is everyone’s job.” Regular communication reinforces this vigilance, as the company “send[s] regular email alerts and updates about real cargo theft incidents, including red flags and prevention tips.” As of Q1 2025, 100% of Crowley’s brokerage and business development teams have completed internal fraud training.

Looking forward, Crowley believes the industry needs “to stop treating fraud as an isolated issue. It’s a critical vulnerability across the entire supply chain.” The company advocates for “stronger collaboration and more real-time data sharing between brokers, carriers and shippers, as well as standardized onboarding practices that emphasize ID verification.”

In an era where fraud schemes are increasingly coordinated and digitally sophisticated, Crowley’s comprehensive approach demonstrates that effective fraud prevention requires more than just technological solutions. As the company states, CrowleySAFE “doesn’t rely on a single piece of software—it’s an ecosystem of tools, policy, and people working in harmony to defend against freight fraud in real time.”

Through its leadership in the Carrier Compliance Network and commitment to shared intelligence, Crowley is helping to build a more secure freight ecosystem that benefits the entire industry. As Crowley succinctly put it: “Education, consistency, and shared accountability are key to building a more secure freight ecosystem.”

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