Counter-fraud

There has been a sharp drop in crime during stay-at-home directives and social isolation. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said his city hasn’t seen such low levels of crime “since the 1950s.”

https://losspreventionmedia.com/post-pandemic-employee-fraud/

We’re living in a golden age for financial crimes and it’s a good time to be a bad actor. Among the many potentials for crime is stimulus fraud – such as what occurred last year with the major stimulus packages passed in response to the pandemic. In 2020 alone, fraudsters siphoned off $36 billion meant for unemployed Americans, and Californian authorities are investigating the possibility that nearly $11 billion was stolen by criminals making fraudulent claims. While unemployment fraud happens elsewhere in the world as well, the sheer scale of the U.S.’s reactive social stimulus structure is a perfect storm for theft.

https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/20328/where-the-covid-19-stimulus-fraud-risks-are--and-how-to-stop-them

Alongside a massive shift to digital payments, 2020 has seen a dramatic rise in online fraud. The Confirmation of Payee (CoP) was just one industry initiative introduced to combat this disturbing trend but its adoption has been slow and the PSR had to intervene with mandated deadlines.

https://thefintechtimes.com/bottomline-stopping-the-rise-of-payments-fraud/

Financial crime prevention is a major concern for lenders planning to make the switch to working from home (WFH) more permanent. But John Dobson of SmartSearch says it could in fact present an opportunity to streamline your anti-money laundering (AML) processes

https://www.mortgagefinancegazette.com/features/aml-must-lenders-shifting-wfh-13-05-2021/

The Covid-19 pandemic put businesses on the hot seat with consumers abandoning the local high street for the global digital marketplace, causing society to undergo a sudden “digital acceleration” – a once-in-a-generation event whereby our dependence on technology has been expedited by over a decade, if not more, in the span of a single year. Overnight, organizations have had to build the solutions needed to support the verification of identity, transactions, and interactions.

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/the-aftermath-of-2020-navigating-the-next-normal-against-fraud

Technology which recognises people’s voices has stopped nearly £249 million of customers’ money from going to telephone fraudsters over the past year, a bank has announced.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/voice-id-technology-prevented-249m-124818951.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly90LmNvLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEeakPy27U1KFa8YGb4vG1NfJXXZl1Z5yvC06QV5UA6_DltFN4rtXcZR0kIGTsrJe2IiGIqnM83PVToZIaYZJEbFNfiCfkBQp_P-COwUOCM1Vddff4ZnCWqLZcUMLFJn7e3sYViddsdu7vKX9VQ917Icgyomv9bcFiq2zgdDIcZk

The fraud tool landscape is changing. Fraud managers are looking for more and more ways to optimize their operations as rising digital payments increase the strain on many fraud detection systems. The use of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (A.I.) has become common in many fraud detection strategies. Many organizations have seen how effective ML can be and are rapidly expanding its use, further developing business value. However, while this way of working makes sense for the first few model implementations, the more machine learning projects that are undertaken, the more manual effort is required to maintain the bots to ensure they remain optimized and up to date.

https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/20284/managing-the-bots-why-automating-the-process-of-managing-ml-models-is-the-future-of-fighting-fraud

Rightmove has announced that it will be starting a gradual roll-out of two-factor authentication within Rightmove Plus to help further protect agents against attempts by fraudsters to steal their leads and upload fake properties under their brand name.

https://propertyindustryeye.com/rightmove-ramps-up-security-to-prevent-fraud/

Amazon prevented more than ten billion fraudulent product listings from appearing in its online stores in 2020 and seized more than two million counterfeit products, according to a new report.

https://www.centralfifetimes.com/news/national-news/19290491.amazon-blocked-ten-billion-fraudulent-listings-2020---report/?ref=twtrec

Boris Johnson’s multimillion pound plan to introduce mandatory voter ID at elections has been criticised as an “illiberal solution in pursuit of a non-existent problem” by a former Tory cabinet minister.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/boris-johnsons-voter-id-plans-illiberal-solution-for-non-existent-problem-says-senior-tory/ar-BB1gxRdw?ocid=st