Julie,
I really echo your comments in regards to the importance of..
QUOTE]The most common case of fraudulent applications that we see are when affiliates try to claim another site as their own - a quick phone call to the website in question can clear this up very quickly.[/quote]
A few of my sites have been abused this way, and the offenders, in my case were offshore. China to be specfic.
The method they used was to make application through a affiliate network and use the information about my site they obtained through a "Who is" lookup of the domain name. The section they filled out for sending the check was also mine, this all make it looks legimate to the affilate manager. They would let this sit for a few months after getting approval from different affilate managers within the affilate network. Then, say within a few months, they would change the address of where the check were to be mailed. The change of address would go undetected by the affiliate managers. They would then enter into boogus sites (charge stolen credit cards for merchant purchases), SPAM mail.
You may ask what about the email address of the domain, which is often used to varify the domain. They would use a name that we would not recognize on our end and it would just appear as SPAM, and be ignored. Like SPOOF.
Julie the best way to fight this problem is through awareness. I tired to go through the affiliate network and they would only say it was the affiliate managers responsibility to verify, not the network. Agencies like the Federal Trade, Attorney General's Office, FBI are helpless to deal with these matters from offshore.
Kind Regards