How to Build a Fraud Program: Fraud at the Foundation

What’s up fraud fighters, and welcome back to Fraud Forward!Today I’m sitting in the guest chair.If you caught the episode of The Saturday Fraud Strategist that dropped alongside this one, you already know Chen Zamir and I decided to swap roles. He came on Fraud Forward to interview me, and I went on his show to interview him. We are heading to Money 20/20 in Vegas together and thought this would be a fun way to kick it off.I spend a lot of time asking questions. Sitting on the other side of the mic is a different experience, and Chen does not ask easy questions. This conversation went places I did not fully expect. We ended in a discussion about how to build a fraud program that works, and more importantly, what gets in the way. If you have ever walked into an organization that has been fighting fraud for a year, spent money on vendors and headcount, and still were at the same place you started, this episode is for you. The answer is a lot deeper than adding another tool.What you will hear in this episode:How to build a fraud program assessment when you walk into an organization that has been struggling and nobody can tell you whyWhy fraud and risk management starts with people, process, technology, and data in that order, and why most organizations start with technology and create more problemsThe fraud capacity planning model I built as a practitioner to prove headcount needs to executives, including the three-minute-per-alert calculation and how to build a 40-hour week model that accounts for everything your team actually doesWhy fraud team structure matters before you can optimize anything, and how to answer the centralized versus decentralized question before you start hiring or buyingThe fraud risk assessment framework I consider the most important tool in a fraud leader's program, including the difference between inherent risk vs residual risk fraud and why a lack of losses does not mean a lack of riskWhy fraud technology layering done wrong looks like stacking medications that interact badly with each other, and what fraud technology gap analysis actually looks like before a vendor demoHow authorized push payment fraud breaks the fraud stack that was built around a single question, is this actually our customer, and why scam detection behavioral signals require a completely different approachThe scam intervention banking framework I used as a practitioner, including targeted friction, cooling off periods, and the phrase I call my mic drop momentHow I approach fraud executive communication and fraud program advocacy when leadership sees losses on a dashboard and misses the fifteen million the team preventedThe fraud dashboard reporting model I want to see: attempted fraud, prevented fraud, actual loss, normalized against transaction volume or deposits, not just gross fraud lossesWhy human in the loop fraud AI is not scalable and what human on the loop means for fraud team skill development right nowWhere fraud program maturity actually stands based on the benchmarking work I have been doing, and why fraud teams are doing better than we give ourselves credit forYou should listen to this episode if you:Are building or rebuilding a fraud program and want to hear how I actually approach it from the ground up, not a framework from a textbook but the real process I used as a practitionerHave ever had to justify headcount, technology, or budget to a leadership team that does not fully understand what fraud prevention actually involves and want a model that makes the case with dataWork at a bank or credit union and are feeling the pressure of the shift from unauthorized fraud to authorized push payment fraud and scams and are not sure how to adapt your fraud stackWant the fraud capacity planning model I built manually as a practitioner, the three-minute-per-alert calculation and the 40-hour week breakdown that finally got leadership to listenAre trying to figure out where AI fits in your fraud program without losing the investigators you have spent years developingLead a fraud team and want to know where fraud program maturity actually stands based on the benchmarking work I have been doing across financial institutionsHave ever walked into a room of blank stares when you asked your team what is actually driving fraud losses and needed a better starting point for that conversation