Synthetic Identities: When Data Becomes a Persona

“What happens when a fraudster doesn’t steal an identity… but builds one from scratch?” Synthetic identities are one of the fastest-growing threats in financial crime. Built from fragments of real and fabricated data, these identities can pass onboarding checks, behave like legitimate users for months or even years, and then suddenly “bust out”, leaving businesses with significant losses. Our special guest this week is Steve Lenderman. Drawing on decades of experience investigating fraud, Steve shares how synthetic identities are created, how they evolve over time, and why this threat has grown from a credit-card problem into a global issue affecting fintech, payroll, government programs, and beyond. From bot-generated identities and AI-assisted fraud to sleeper accounts, bust-out schemes, and synthetic businesses, this conversation explores how organized crime groups and even nation-state actors are scaling these attacks. We also look at why collaboration between industries is critical, how behavioural and device intelligence can reveal hidden patterns, and what companies can do to detect synthetic identities before the damage is done. Mentioned in this episode – how Device Intelligence detects synthetic identities early: https://sumsub.link/ykm Sumsub’s Website: sumsub.com Sumsub’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/sumsub Sumsub’s Instagram: instagram.com/sumsubcom Sumsub on X: x.com/Sumsubcom Sumsub’s YouTube Channel: youtube.com/@sumsubcom Thomas Taraniuk on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tomtaraniuk Steve Lenderman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-lenderman Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.