#11642 min
E aí, combatentes da fraude, bem-vindos de volta ao Fraud Forward!
Quero tirar um momento para falar sobre algo maior do que uma tendência de golpe, uma manchete sobre criptomoedas ou um tipo específico de fraude. Estamos falando da fraude como infraestrutura.
Porque o que estamos vendo agora não é uma atividade isolada. Redes de fraude organizadas estão operando como sistemas coordenados, conectando golpes de abate de porco, golpes de engenharia social, contas laranja, lavagem de dinheiro com criptomoedas, lacunas em prevenção à fraude e à lavagem de dinheiro, além de questões de segurança nacional e de crimes financeiros.
E, pessoal, isso é importante porque por trás de cada caso existe uma pessoa de verdade. A aposentadoria de alguém. A confiança de alguém. A estabilidade financeira de alguém. Alguém que foi manipulado por uma rede criminosa muito antes de o dinheiro sequer começar a circular.
O que você vai ouvir neste episódio:
- Por que a fraude como infraestrutura muda a forma como precisamos pensar sobre crimes financeiros
- Como redes de fraude organizadas estão usando infraestrutura de golpes, contas laranja e lavagem de dinheiro com criptomoedas
- Por que os golpes de pig butchering e os golpes de engenharia social não são casos simples e isolados
- Onde as instituições financeiras estão avançando na prevenção de fraudes e de golpes
- Por que as investigações de fraude precisam de uma colaboração mais forte entre fraude, AML, crimes cibernéticos e autoridades policiais
- Como as parcerias público-privadas podem ajudar a fechar as brechas que os criminosos estão explorando
- O que os combatentes de fraude podem levar de volta às suas equipes à medida que a fraude organizada se torna mais conectada
Quem deve ouvir:
- Líderes de instituições financeiras e profissionais de prevenção a fraudes
- Equipes de risco, conformidade, fraude e AML, e de cibersegurança
- Responsáveis pela BSA e investigadores de fraude
- Reguladores e consultores de políticas
- Líderes de parcerias público-privadas
- Profissionais de apoio e defesa das vítimas
- Qualquer pessoa que esteja tentando entender como a fraude organizada afeta pessoas reais
A fraude não existe em silos, e nossas soluções também não deveriam.
Notas do episódio
Fraude como infraestrutura significa que as redes de fraude organizadas estão se tornando mais conectadas, industrializadas, adaptáveis e globais.
Estamos observando uma infraestrutura de crimes financeiros que abrange centros de golpes, esquemas de pig butchering, contas laranja, lavagem de dinheiro com criptomoedas, golpes de engenharia social e redes de lavagem transfronteiriça.
Deixe-me apenas assegurar-lhe: isto não é atividade fraudulenta aleatória. Isto é crime organizado.
Há progresso.
Audiências públicas, investigações de fraude, inteligência em blockchain, conversas sobre denúncias de fraude e parcerias público-privadas estão ajudando a dar visibilidade à fraude organizada e à fraude em instituições financeiras.
Isso é importante. A conscientização é importante. O compartilhamento de inteligência é importante. A colaboração é importante.
A conscientização por si só não é suficiente.
As vítimas frequentemente denunciam o mesmo crime em sistemas fragmentados, enquanto os criminosos atuam como empresas coordenadas.
As instituições financeiras geralmente veem apenas a fase final do golpe, não a inicial. Quando a movimentação do dinheiro acontece, o aliciamento, a coerção, o isolamento e a manipulação psicológica já podem estar ocorrendo há meses.
A prevenção a golpes não pode depender apenas de alertas, roteiros para agências ou de uma única equipe tentando resolver sozinha um problema de crime organizado global.
As vítimas não estão simplesmente “caindo em algum golpe.”
Elas estão sendo manipuladas por redes organizadas de fraude que utilizam roteiros, pressão emocional, construção de confiança e golpes de engenharia social projetados para enfraquecer suas defesas ao longo do tempo.
Sinto muito que isso tenha acontecido com você. Não foi sua culpa.
Isso deve ser a base de como respondemos.
Empatia não é opcional.
Os combatentes de fraude estão sendo pressionados a equilibrar a autonomia do cliente, a prevenção de fraudes, a gestão de riscos de fraude, a pressão por reembolsos, as preocupações com abuso de idosos, as limitações operacionais e as expectativas regulatórias.
Isso é muita coisa.
Se vamos falar sobre segurança nacional e crime financeiro, lavagem de dinheiro com criptomoedas, contas laranja e fraude organizada, também precisamos falar sobre responsabilidade. Não culpa. Responsabilidade.
Como podemos criar sistemas que protejam as pessoas mais cedo? Como podemos compartilhar inteligência mais rapidamente? Como podemos ajudar as equipes da linha de frente a criar aquela pausa antes que o dinheiro saia?
O caminho a seguir é a colaboração.
Precisamos de um alinhamento mais forte entre fraude e AML, de uma infraestrutura de relatórios mais eficiente, de investigações de fraude mais integradas, de parcerias público-privadas mais robustas e de uma maior partilha de inteligência entre as instituições.
Uma maré crescente levanta todos os barcos. E se redes organizadas de fraude atuam em conjunto, então os combatentes da fraude também precisam lutar juntos.
Principais pontos
- A fraude como infraestrutura está mudando a forma como entendemos o crime financeiro moderno.
- Redes organizadas de fraude são coordenadas, adaptáveis e globais.
- Golpes de pig butchering e golpes de engenharia social dependem de manipulação emocional muito antes de o dinheiro começar a circular.
- A lavagem de dinheiro com criptomoedas, as contas laranja e a infraestrutura de crimes financeiros estão cada vez mais interligadas.
- As instituições financeiras geralmente veem apenas a transação final, não toda a jornada do golpe.
- A prevenção de fraudes e de golpes exige uma colaboração mais forte entre as equipes de fraude e de AML.
- Parcerias público-privadas e o compartilhamento de inteligência são essenciais para desarticular fraudes organizadas.
Este episódio trata de encarar a fraude como infraestrutura, e não como eventos isolados.
Quando golpes, lavagem de dinheiro com criptomoedas, contas laranja, redes organizadas de fraude e questões de segurança nacional e crimes financeiros começam a se sobrepor, nossos modelos de resposta também precisam evoluir.
Não podemos continuar pedindo que os combatentes de fraude enfrentem o crime global coordenado usando ferramentas desconectadas e fluxos de trabalho isolados. Precisamos de colaboração. Precisamos de empatia. Precisamos de inteligência compartilhada. E precisamos proteger as pessoas por trás de cada caso.
Mantenha-se vigilante, bem informado e continue impulsionando o combate à fraude.
Episode transcript
Hailey Windham
00:05
What’s up, Fraud Fighters? Before we jump into today’s episode, I want to say thank you. Last week, we hit 100 episodes of Fraud Forward with our first live town hall episode, and I’m still processing just how incredible that moment was. You know, it was a live conversation with some of the smartest voices in the industry. We had real dialogue, real questions, real collaboration. Two years ago, when I launched this podcast, I never could have imagined we’d be here. But what stood out most, at least to me, wasn’t the milestone itself. It was the reminder that this community is growing because fraud fighters genuinely care about protecting people and helping each other get better. So whether you’ve listened since episode one or you just found the show recently, thank you. But you have been warned, okay? Because we’re just getting started. The conversations we need to have in this industry are getting bigger. The threats are getting more connected. And fraud fighters need spaces where we can talk honestly about what’s happening, what’s actually happening. Which brings me to today’s episode.
Hailey Windham
01:27
Instead of focusing on one isolated fraud trend, I want to zoom out and talk about something bigger: a pattern, a shift, a reality that I think fraud fighters across banking, fintech, crypto, compliance, investigations, and law enforcement are all feeling right now. And that reality is this: fraud is no longer behaving like isolated crime. It’s behaving like infrastructure. Connected. Coordinated. Industrialized. Adaptive. And honestly, this past week’s news cycle reinforced that in a major way. So today, I want to walk through a few headlines that caught my attention and talk about what they actually mean for fraud fighters on the ground, because these stories sound separate on the surface, but they’re not. Okay, so last week, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and China convened a hearing everyone in our industry should watch.
Hailey Windham
02:26
The hearing was titled Crime, Corruption, and Power: The Rise of CCP-Linked Scam Networks Targeting Americans. And that discussion, like hearing that discussion happen at that level, that’s a big deal. For years, fraud fighters have been trying to explain that what we’re seeing with pig butchering scams, crypto investment scams, social engineering schemes, and organized laundering networks is not random fraud activity. It is coordinated infrastructure. And if you’ve worked scam cases firsthand, you already know this. They aren’t isolated scammers sitting in basements somewhere. These are organized ecosystems operating at scale. Training, scripts, compounds, technology, money laundering networks, mule recruitment, psychological manipulation, all operating like an enterprise. And I really appreciated commentary from people like Matt Hogan and Gary Warner, who helped frame why this hearing mattered beyond just the headlines. Because fraud fighters have known for a long time that these networks are adaptive, coordinated, and global. So I do have a little bit of a personal connection here. And I’ll say that this hearing was one that really did hit on that personal level, because during my time helping lead the banking team for Operation Shamrock, I sat in victim meetings that I will never forget. People who lost their retirement savings. People manipulated for months, even years. People isolated emotionally before the money ever moved. And I think one of the biggest misconceptions about scams is that people still frame victims as simply falling for something. That framing misses the sophistication entirely. These are coordinated psychological operations. The manipulation starts long before the transaction is even considered. Long before the wire, long before the crypto purchase, long before the member walks into a branch requesting cash. And the scammers are extraordinarily skilled at what they do. That’s what makes this so dangerous. One of the posts I saw afterward came from Erin West, who absolutely crushed it during her testimony. But she said something I absolutely agree with. We are long overdue for a better reporting system in the United States because right now, victims are often reporting the same crime to local police, IC3, their financial institution, maybe the FBI, maybe Homeland Security, maybe the Secret Service, maybe crypto exchanges.
Hailey Windham
04:52
And many of those systems still don’t effectively connect in real time. Meanwhile, the scammers operate like a coordinated business. They share infrastructure. They share laundering paths. They share scripts. They share technology. They iterate constantly. But the defenders, we still largely respond through fragmented workflows, and that gap matters. Now, I want to say something directly to banks and credit unions listening. Financial institutions are often seeing the last stage of the scam, not the first. By the time the money movement happens, the grooming already occurred. The trust was already built. The manipulation already happened. The coercion already happened. And this creates one of the hardest tensions in banking right now because institutions are trying to balance customer autonomy, fraud prevention, regulatory expectations, reimbursement pressure, elder abuse concerns, and operational realities. And all the while, frontline employees are trying to make those judgment calls in real time against highly manipulated victims. I’ve said it before. It’s like you have 10 minutes, maybe, to convince them that the conversation and the trust that’s been built over the last six months or two years is all fake. Don’t send that wire, please. Here’s why you’re following the patterns of a scam. But meanwhile, they’re like, no, I’ve talked to this person literally every day for the last six months. They wouldn’t do this to me. You’re just my bank. What do you know? You don’t know me the way that this person knows me. So honestly, I think that sometimes it feels like fraud teams are being asked to solve a global organized crime problem with branch scripts and alert queues. That doesn’t mean institutions shouldn’t improve. They absolutely should. But we also need to acknowledge that the scale is mismatched here. [Ad Break (6:52): Finally, I’m so happy to share with you all that The Saturday Fraud Strategist is now a podcast. What? Yeah. On top of my weekly newsletter, you can now listen to and watch me talk about my, and hopefully your, favorite topic: fraud strategy. And from time to time, I’ll be hosting operators and founders to discuss where the industry is headed and what we fraud fighters should pay attention to. I must say, I’m super excited, and if I’m being honest, a bit nervous about all of this. I’ve been debating with myself whether to start a podcast for ages, but kept putting it off. But now this is the result, so I guess there’s no turning back. So if you want to join me for the ride, head over to Sardine’s website and subscribe now. Are you ready? Am I ready? We’ll find out next Saturday.]
Hailey Windham
07:51
Okay, the second thing, another story that caught my attention this week, connects directly to this broader conversation around organized fraud infrastructure. TRM Labs recently shared testimony from Ari Redbord, who was featured on Fraud Forward as well. But he went before the House Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on National Security. And this one mattered far beyond crypto because one of the biggest mistakes people still make is thinking that crypto-enabled crime is somehow separate from traditional fraud. It’s not. Increasingly, crypto is becoming part of the laundering architecture behind scams, sanctions evasion, organized crime, trafficking, and nation-state financial activity. And one thing I appreciate about Ari’s perspective is that he consistently focuses on collaboration instead of fear-mongering. Because if we’re honest, financial institutions are exhausted by headlines that basically just scream everything is terrible and good luck. That’s not helpful. But what is helpful is understanding where money moves, how criminal ecosystems operate, where visibility gaps exist, and how public-private partnerships can actually disrupt activity. And that’s really where this testimony focused. If the first hearing exposed the industrialization of scam compounds, this testimony highlighted another reality. Financial crime, cybercrime, national security, and digital assets are no longer separate conversations. They’re converging. And fraud teams are increasingly sitting right in the middle of that convergence, whether they realize it or not. Because the same scam that starts with social engineering may end in stablecoins, layered wallets, OTC brokers, mule accounts, international laundering networks, and cash-out infrastructure spanning multiple jurisdictions. And one thing Ari has discussed publicly before that always sticks with me is this idea that blockchain can actually provide visibility traditional financial systems sometimes cannot. Now, that does not mean crypto is always safe, right? And it definitely doesn’t mean fraud risk disappears. But it does mean investigators now have intelligence tools capable of tracing illicit activity in ways that weren’t always possible before. And I think that nuance sometimes gets lost in public conversations. Now, for banks and credit unions listening, this matters even if your institution never directly touches crypto, because your customers do.
Hailey Windham
10:26
Your scam victims do. Your mule accounts do. Your investigations do. And increasingly, fraud investigators need at least a foundational understanding of digital asset movement and laundering typologies. Not because every institution needs to become a blockchain analytics company, but because fraud ecosystems no longer stop at the edge of the core banking system. Okay, and then there is another development I want to briefly touch on today, but I’m not going to go in too deep because next week I’m actually doing a much deeper, bigger conversation with, or about this, with one of my favorite people in the industry. You know her, or you’ve seen her before on episodes, but Nyla Cortez. So the White House recently released a presidential action titled Integrating Financial Technology Innovation Into Regulatory Frameworks. And if you work in fraud, compliance, fintech payments, or banking leadership, this is one you’re going to want to pay attention to. Now, I’ll be honest. I’m still digesting parts of it myself because anytime you start talking about innovation acceleration, fintech modernization, AI, digital infrastructure, reducing friction, faster adoption, fraud fighters immediately start asking a different set of questions. Okay, yeah, but what about authentication, synthetic identity, scam prevention, governance, operational readiness, examination expectations, consumer protection? Because innovation and fraud pressure tend to scale together. That’s just reality. And honestly, this ties directly back to everything we’ve talked about in this episode already. We are watching financial institutions modernize rapidly, payment ecosystems accelerate, AI capabilities expand, digital assets mature, and global scam infrastructure industrialize all at the same time. And sometimes it feels like fraud teams are sprinting on moving pavement, trying to keep up. Fraud fighters don’t hate innovation. We just know every new convenience layer creates a new attack surface too. So next week, Nyla and I are going to spend some time unpacking what this could mean operationally, where fraud and compliance teams may feel that tension, where modernization could genuinely help, and where institutions need to be careful not to confuse innovation with reduced risk.
Hailey Windham
12:50
Because those things are not the same, right? And if you know Nyla, you already know that this conversation is going to be candid, practical, and probably include at least one moment where we both stop and say, okay, but how could this actually work in a real financial institution? So stay tuned for that. Okay, the biggest theme emerging across all of these stories is this: fraud isn’t staying in its neat little category anymore. Scams, cybercrime, payments, crypto, national security, human trafficking, organized crime, AI. These systems are overlapping more every day. And our response models still haven’t fully caught up. And I’ve said this before on this podcast, and I’ll keep saying it. Fraud behaves like a continuous coordinated system. And if that’s true, then fraud prevention can’t operate in silos anymore either. Not between banks. Not between fintechs. Not between law enforcement. Not between fraud and AML. Not between cyber and payments. Because the people committing these crimes are coordinated. And we have to be too, fraud fighters. Keep pushing. Keep collaborating. Keep educating. Keep disrupting. Fraud evolves. So do we. Keep moving fraud forward. Thanks for listening to Fraud Forward. Remember, every conversation, every connection, and every insight moves our industry one step closer to stronger fraud defenses. If today’s episode sparked an idea, share it with your team or tag me on LinkedIn. I love hearing how you’re moving fraud forward in your own organization. Until next time, stay curious, stay resilient, and keep moving fraud forward.
Hailey Windham
14:10
Thanks for listening to Fraud Forward. Remember, every conversation, every connection, and every insight moves our industry one step closer to stronger fraud defenses. If today's episode sparked an idea, share it with your team or tag me on LinkedIn. I love hearing how you are moving fraud forward in your own organization. Until next time, stay curious, stay resilient, and keep moving fraud forward.
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