---
title: Fraud Follows the Money: What Washington & Vegas Have Me Thinking About
source_page: https://www.sardine.ai/media/fraud-forward/episodes/fraud-driven-flows
canonical: https://www.sardine.ai/media/fraud-forward/episodes/fraud-driven-flows
format: text/markdown
date: 2026-10-07T04:01:00.000Z
description: Two different conferences, and the same conversation. What fraud driven flows reveal about real-time payments, stablecoins, and fraud program culture…
---

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# Fraud Follows the Money: What Washington & Vegas Have Me Thinking About

**Published:** 2026-10-07T04:01:00.000Z

Two different conferences, and the same conversation. What fraud driven flows reveal about real-time payments, stablecoins, and fraud program culture…

What's up fraud fighters and welcome back to Fraud Forward!
I just got home from Las Vegas at four in the morning on Friday after starting the week in Washington DC. I am home for exactly two more sleeps before I turn around and leave again. Today there is no guest. It is just me, my microphone, and a notebook full of things to talk about.
I started the week at HHS then I flew from DC to Vegas for ACAMS The Assembly. Two completely different rooms. Yet I kept writing down versions of the same thing. Culture. Data. Accountability. Collaboration. Speed. Technology.
And then one sentence from Washington ended up framing the entire week for me. Fraud follows money. That is how this episode starts and that is how it ends. Where the money goes, fraud follows. When the money changes, fraud changes. When the way we move money gets faster, fraud gets faster. When we create a new product, somebody figures out how to exploit it. When we close one vulnerability, they find another.
That is fraud driven flows in practice. And if you pay attention to where the money is going next, you will have a much better picture of where the fraud is going.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
Why fraud driven flows connects real-time payments fraud, stablecoin fraud risks, and check fraud in the digital age into one through line
Government fraud program banking parallels that reframe how we think about audit accountability and corrective action
Why fraud prevention stewardship and the line a dollar saved is worth more than a dollar recovered should change how we talk to leadership
How fraud program culture functions as a control and why fraud incentive misalignment quietly defeats everything else we build
What ACAMS Assembly 2026 insights on real-time payments fraud and stablecoin financial crime risks mean for fraud risk beyond organizational boundary
Why fraud technology before problem definition is still one of the most expensive mistakes in fraud programs and what AI fraud results measurement should actually look like
How fraud program single point of failure is a fraud risk hiding inside a staffing conversation
Why fraud collaboration operationalized looks nothing like fraud collaboration discussed
You should listen to this episode if you:
Lead a fraud program and have ever felt like you are having the same conversation in completely different rooms
Are trying to figure out how to measure fraud prevention value and tell a better story to leadership
Care about fraud program culture and want to hear why it functions as a control, not a soft concept
Have ever bought technology before understanding the problem you were trying to solve
Are dealing with fraud knowledge retention risk because one person on your team knows everything and you are not sure what happens when they leave
### Episode notes
Fraud driven flows: the thread connecting Washington and Vegas
The fraudster does not care what we call the product. They care about opportunity. Where is the money? How do I access it? How quickly can I move it? Where are the gaps? That is the fraudster's risk assessment. Sometimes I think theirs might be a little more current than ours are.
Two completely different conferences. The same conversation underneath. We have data. Are we using it? We find problems. Are we fixing them? We know collaboration matters. Are we sharing information fast enough to make a difference? Did we know what problem we were solving before we bought the technology?
Fraud program accountability and fraud data connection gaps
Think about how often we investigate something and discover afterward that pieces of information existed across the institution before the loss. The branch knew something. An alert had fired. Another account had been flagged. The data existed. We just did not connect it in time. Those are fraud data connection gaps and they are one of the most consistent things I see inside struggling programs.
Finding the problem is only half of it. Corrective action, ownership, and follow through are the other half. How many times has a vulnerability been identified, discussed, agreed upon, and then exploited again three months later because nobody owned the fix? At what point do we stop calling that a fraud problem and start calling it a fraud program accountability problem?
Fraud prevention stewardship and fraud program storytelling
A dollar saved is worth more than a dollar recovered. I cannot get that out of my head. We understand the concept. Preventing the loss is better than recovering it. But fraud prevention value communication is hard. It is easy to show a $500,000 loss. It is much harder to show that the $500,000 loss never happened. We cannot only tell the story of what we lost. We need to get better at telling the story of what we prevented.
Fraud program culture and fraud incentive misalignment
If I measure an investigator on how many alerts they close, they become really good at closing alerts. That is not the same as becoming good at preventing fraud. If the business is measured on growth and fraud is measured on losses, those two teams can quickly become adversaries. Culture can be a control. It can also defeat every control you build.
Real-time payments fraud, stablecoin fraud risks, and fraud risk beyond organizational boundary
The biggest difference between Washington and Vegas was speed. What happens when the money moves faster than you can follow it? Stablecoin financial crime risks made this especially clear. Financial institutions cannot look at stablecoins and say they do not offer that product so it is not their problem. Your customer might interact with it. The recipient might. Another institution in the transaction chain might. Fraud risk beyond organizational boundary is the current problem, not a future one.
Fraud technology before problem definition and AI fraud results measurement
Start with the outcome you are trying to get to. Do not buy a solution before you do that. What are we trying to fix? What is happening? Why is the existing control failing? Then talk technology. I wrote results in huge letters in my notebook during an AI conversation at ACAMS. What did it actually do? Did we save money? Did we prevent something? That is AI fraud results measurement. Not whether we can say we are using AI.
Fraud program single point of failure and fraud knowledge retention
We have that one investigator who knows everything about a particular scheme. Then they leave. How much knowledge walks out the door? That is not just a staffing issue. That is a fraud program single point of failure. Fraud knowledge retention is a program design problem. If your fraud program depends on one person remembering how something works, you do not have a process. You have a person. That is a vulnerability.
### Key takeaways
Fraud driven flows means fraud follows money in every direction. Real-time payments fraud, stablecoin fraud risks, and check fraud in the digital age all exist on the same continuum.
Fraud data connection gaps are one of the most consistent problems inside struggling fraud programs. The data almost always existed before the loss.
A dollar saved is worth more than a dollar recovered. Fraud prevention stewardship and fraud program storytelling require us to get much better at communicating what we prevented, not just what we lost.
Fraud program culture is a control. Fraud incentive misalignment is one of the most common ways fraud programs fail quietly from the inside.
Fraud risk beyond organizational boundary is not a future concern. Stablecoin financial crime risks and real-time payments fraud mean fraud does not stop at your organizational boundary.
Fraud program single point of failure is a program design vulnerability. If your program depends on one person, you have a person, not a process.
### Final takeaway
I do not have a profound answer after this week. I honestly have more questions than I did before I went, which is one of the reasons I like going to these things. Washington did that for me. ACAMS did that for me. I went from HHS in Washington talking about federal funds and audit and waste to Vegas talking about stablecoins and real-time payments and AI. And I kept hearing echoes of the same conversation.
The one sentence I am circling back to is the one that started the week and the one that still feels right to end on. Fraud follows money. Our job is to make sure we are paying attention to where the money is going next. Stay vigilant, stay informed, keep moving fraud forward.
Episode resources & links
Connect with Hailey Windham, CFCS | LinkedIn
Host of the Fraud Forward Podcast
Banking Community Lead at Sardine
Certified Financial Crimes Specialist (CFCS)
2023 Credit Union Rockstar, CU Magazine
Continuous Improvement Award, SAFE Federal Credit Union, 2023
Top 20 Professionals Under 40, The Sumter Item, 2022