At 2:25 on a Thursday afternoon, a man in his mid-30s, wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, a short jacket, a baseball cap, and dark sunglasses enters a busy bank branch. He appears nervous and stops momentarily inside the entrance, quickly surveying the surroundings. Before he can get much farther, a branch employee approaches him, offering a handshake and asking how he can help.

“Good afternoon! I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. My name is Mark—how can I help you?”

Mark has just taken the first step either in delivering great customer service or in foiling an attempted robbery—or both. It can be hard to tell. But that is the beauty of SafeCatch, a behavior-based system designed to thwart attempted robberies and fraud.

As U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent in charge of bank robbery coordination in the Seattle Division, Larry Carr developed the SafeCatch concept in 2006 in response to an increase in robberies and a decrease in the quality of robber recognition and apprehension. The concept is founded on three key principles: