Fraud Fight Club Debrief with Karisse Hendrick and Jen Lamont
What’s up, fraud fighters, and welcome back to Fraud Forward!
This Fraud Fight Club recap is one I have been wanting to put down in words because some events are just conferences, and some events remind you exactly why this work matters. This one brought together fraud fighters from across the industry, from brand-new practitioners to people who have shaped this space for years, and it created the kind of honest, useful, human conversations that do not happen nearly enough.
This was not just another event where people showed up, swapped business cards, sat through panels, and flew home. Yes, there were sessions. Yes, there were deep dives. Yes, there were a lot of smart people in the room. But what stayed with me was the heart behind it. The honesty. The humility. The willingness to share what is not working, not just what sounds good on stage.
In this episode, I sat down with Karisse Hendrick and Jen Lamont after a packed few days in Charlotte to talk through what stood out, what hit hard, and what still has me thinking. We talked about the sessions, about the conversations happening in the hallways, the sidebars, the debriefs, and the moments that make you stop and think, okay, this industry is changing.
We got into the real heart of Fraud Fight Club, the energy behind it, the collaboration, the pattern recognition, and the reminder that anti-fraud collaboration is not a nice idea anymore. It is a requirement.
And honestly, this conversation also went somewhere deeper. We talked about scam awareness through the lens of victim stories that were impossible to shake. We talked about first-party fraud and a case that showed what can happen when investigation, collaboration, and persistence all line up. We talked about ghost tapping fraud, chargeback fraud, and the very real sense that fraud fighters are trying to move faster in an environment where fraudsters still have fewer constraints than the rest of us.
This is one of those episodes where the big takeaway is not just “here is what happened at a fraud conference.” It is bigger than that. It is about what happens when the people who care deeply about scam prevention, financial institution fraud, and banking fraud get in the same room and stop pretending they can solve it alone.
Here is what that collaborative fraud-fighting mindset means in practice:
- It means making room for new fraud fighters, not just established voices.
- It means learning from victim stories without turning their pain into a talking point.
- It means sharing tactics, trends, and blind spots across institutions instead of guarding information too tightly.It means recognizing that fraud industry networking only matters if it turns into action after the event ends.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- Why Fraud Fight Club feels different from other fraud conferences
- What Tracy Hall’s story revealed about the emotional and systemic toll of scams
- Why scam awareness and victim advocacy have to be part of any serious fraud prevention conference conversation
- What stood out in Jen Lamont’s first-party fraud case with Marc Evans
- Why ghost tapping fraud is still creating confusion for financial institutions
- How chargeback fraud, merchant fraud, and issuer-side fraud strategy connect more than people realize
- Why anti fraud collaboration is becoming one of the most important shifts in the industry
- How Merchant Fraud Alliance fits into the bigger picture from here
You should listen to this episode if you:
- Work in financial institution fraud and want a sharper sense of where the industry is heading
- Care about scam prevention and want a more human conversation about romance scam victim advocacy
- Are trying to understand why first-party fraud and ghost tapping fraud keep surfacing in the same broader fraud conversations
- Want a real fraud event recap that goes deeper than “these were the sessions”
- Believe fraud industry networking should lead to actual progress, not just more business cards
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Episode notes & key takeaways:
Why Fraud Fight Club feels different from other fraud conferences
I have been to enough events to know when something is just well produced and when something is actually meaningful. Fraud Fight Club felt real. What kept coming up was that it did not feel like a typical fraud conference. It felt like an unconference, a reunion, a fraud fighter summer camp, and a place where people showed up to talk honestly about what is happening in the trenches, what they are seeing, what they are struggling with and where they need help. That matters more than I can say. Because when the room feels safe enough for people to be honest, that changes the quality of every conversation that follows.
What stood out to me most was how often all three of us came back to the same idea: the real value was not confined to the stage. It was in the side conversations, the debriefs, the moments where newer people in the industry got direct access to people they have looked up to for years, and the feeling that this community is growing not just in size, but in heart. That is not fluff. That is a real shift in how people are showing up for each other in this space.
That is also why this Fraud Fight Club recap is about more than attendance or agenda. It is about what happens when fraud industry networking actually becomes useful.
Scam awareness has to include the human toll
One of the hardest parts of this episode was the conversation about Tracy Hall. Her experience was devastating, but what made it especially important was that it forced us to slow down and remember that scam awareness is not just about knowing the patterns. It is about understanding the damage. Her story was not just another romance scam victim story. That was exactly the point. This was a real-life relationship, not just an online interaction, and the scale of deception, loss, and manipulation hit differently because of that. This was a real woman, in a real relationship, whose trust, finances, and future were shattered. And that changes how you listen. Or at least, it should.
What hit me even more was what happened when she reached out for help. That part should stay with every fraud fighter. Because if we want to talk seriously about scam prevention, then we have to talk seriously about what happens after the fraud is uncovered. A romance scam victim does not stop needing support once the money is gone. The same is true for people impacted by a pig butchering scam, a sextortion scam, or any other form of emotionally manipulative crime. We have to ask if our systems support the people who have been targeted or if they leave those people isolated and ashamed. If they do, then we still have a huge gap.
First-party fraud is still one of the most practical conversations in banking fraud
Jen’s story with Marc Evans was one of my favorite parts of this conversation because it was practical in the best way. It was not vague. It was not theoretical. It was a real first-party fraud case with real loss exposure, real pattern recognition, real investigative work, and a real outcome. Those are the stories I always want more of because they show what financial institution fraud work actually looks like when it is messy, time-sensitive, and not at all obvious on day one.
There was a lot packed into that story: pattern recognition, collaboration, 314(b) information sharing, the role of casinos, the challenge of acting fast enough to preserve evidence, and the fact that banking fraud does not stay neatly contained inside one state, one institution, or one department. That is exactly why first-party fraud remains such an important conversation in banking fraud. It is not just about whether a member gets reimbursed. It is about whether the institution can actually see what is happening clearly enough to act with confidence.
What I also appreciated was how naturally this part of the discussion tied back into chargeback fraud and broader merchant-bank relationships. Hailey made that connection clearly. A lot of institutions still talk about these problems like they live in separate lanes. They do not.
Ghost tapping fraud is still confusing people, and that matters
I was really glad ghost tapping fraud came up because this is exactly the kind of issue that shows why these conversations matter. A lot of teams may be seeing something strange, talking around it, and not fully realizing they are looking at the same pattern. That is what makes this so important. If people are observing it but not naming it clearly, then they are going to struggle to compare notes, respond quickly, and figure out what needs to happen next.
What felt especially real in this part of the conversation was Jen describing the rabbit hole. That is how it goes sometimes. You see a pattern. You know it is something. You start digging. You talk it through. You compare what you are seeing. You keep pulling on the thread until the dots finally connect. That process matters. It is not always clean, and it is not always fast, but it is real. And that is exactly why practitioners need places where they can say, “Here is what I am seeing. Are you seeing this too?” without feeling like they are supposed to already know the answer.
That is part of why a fraud conference can still be incredibly useful when it is done right. Not because it gives you a neat list of trends, but because it helps you make sense of what you are already bumping into.
Anti fraud collaboration is becoming the real differentiator
If there was one theme that tied this whole episode together for me, it was anti-fraud collaboration. Not as a buzzword. Not as a tagline. As an actual operating reality. Fraudsters collaborate constantly. They share tactics. They move fast. They adapt. Meanwhile, too many institutions are still trying to solve pieces of the problem in isolation, through separate teams, separate systems, separate priorities, and separate rules. That gap is real, and it is costing us.
But I do think something is shifting. I heard it in this episode. I felt it at the event. More openness. More honesty. More willingness to say, “We do not have this fully solved, but here is what we are seeing.” That is the kind of movement I pay attention to. And it is a big part of why I am excited about Merchant Fraud Alliance too. Different audience, yes. Different lens, yes. But the same bigger need is sitting underneath it: get the right people in the room and make the conversation useful.
Because if there is a path forward here, it is not going to come from one team or one company having the perfect answer. It is going to come from better sharing, better trust, better partnership, and a stronger commitment to learning faster together.
What stayed with me after this conversation was not just the energy of the event. It was the reminder that there is still a lot of conviction in this industry. A lot of heart. A lot of people who care enough to keep showing up, keep learning, keep sharing, and keep fighting for better outcomes. We are still facing fast-moving fraud patterns. We are still behind in some important ways. But I also left this conversation feeling something that matters just as much: momentum. And if we keep building that through better scam awareness, stronger first-party fraud conversations, clearer recognition of patterns like ghost tapping fraud, and deeper anti-fraud collaboration, then that is how we actually move this work forward.
