Call Protect – Get This Fraud Service for Family Members

There is a new way to protect yourself and your family from being a victim of identity theft and fraud.  ATT just announced a new app called “Call Protect” which you can download straight to your phone to protect you from fraudsters. It promises to stop spam calls, calls from fraudsters dialing for dollars and […]

Fraud Scientists Uncover Reverse Occupancy Fraud

Liang Tian, a Fraud Scientist with CoreLogic in San Diego, has proved that fraudsters will do anything to fool mortgage lenders into approving fraudulent applications. And that includes doing a complete 180 on their fraud schemes to avoid detection. The latest scam?  Reverse Occupancy Fraud where a borrower buys a home as an investment property […]

Can you Fight Fraud with Credit Score Models? NOPE.

In 2004, the mortgage industry was booming.  Lenders were originating more loans than ever before.  At its height, mortgage companies were originating and in many cases selling close to $3 trillion in loans annually.   Mortgage production had literally tripled in 2 years. It was a lending boom. It seemingly didn’t matter what type of […]

Glut of Breached Data Is Causing Massive Price Drop

Supply and Demand.  It is one of the first concepts you learn in economics. And the Dark Web is learning how it works too. As the supply of breached healthcare records increase exponentially on the dark web, the sellers are reducing their prices drastically to offload the data.  I mean they are dropping the prices […]

Top Vendors That Knock Out Fraud By Fraud Type

Thinking of buying a fraud solution?  There are hundreds of vendors out there selling something and everything for each fraud type. I compiled a list of the top vendors for each fraud type based on market share.  Each of these fraud solutions vendors have established a niche in fraud detection for a particular area. I […]

False Declines for Fraud Cost Online Merchants Billions

It happens to everyone.  You go to a website and find something you want to buy.  You type in your credit card number, personal details, and shipping address and click submit.   Then you get the message, “We were unable to complete your transaction, please call your issuing bank” You probably got declined because something about […]

Were Brute Force Attacks Key In Tesco Breach?

Gone in 6 seconds.  Is it possible that hackers can correctly guess a card number, expiration date, postal code and CVV out of thin air and then use it to purchase goods fraudulently online? Apparently, it is.  And this impressive video shows the hacking program created to do just that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwvjZGKwKvY Students at Newcastle University believe they […]

Is Fraud on Square A Problem? Not Yet, But It Could Be.

Take any card number.  Type it into your computer.  Get funds the next day!  Wow. Well, I just received an interesting email from Square, that advised me I could do just that.  The subject of the email said, “Your Computer = Your Payment Terminal.” They promised me that I could type in any card number […]

Buy Online, Pick-Up In Store Is Pushing Fraud Way Up

Black Fraud Day (Friday) was a big success for online retailers this year.   Consumers flocked to their computers to shop this year pushing sales to over $3 Billion.  That’s a 15% increase over last year. But consumers aren’t the only ones flocking to big internet sites like Amazon, Macy’s, eBay and Best Buy to […]

Fraud Scientist Tackles Football Turnovers in the NFL

When Joel Bock isn’t busy building fraud detection models to detect identity thieves like the ones that steal $6 billion a year filing phony tax returns,  he uses his skills for his other passion – football analytics. Joel is a fraud data scientist by day analyzing massive sets of fraud data, identifying predictive fraud variables, […]

Retailers Brace for Millions of Fraud Attacks

The Friday after Thanksgiving is a great day for shopping.  It’s also an awful day for fraud.  As shoppers flock to retailers to snap up huge discounts on Christmas gifts, they create the perfect cover for fraudsters looking to hide. Black Fraud Day Not Black Friday Black Friday is so bad that Fraud Managers across the world refer […]

10 Hot Spots for Auto Lending Fraud in the US

Auto Lending Fraud does not get a lot of attention here in the US.  If you consider that the fraud rate is about 50 basis points and there are close to $1 trillion in loans, the losses mount up pretty quickly. After doing some research and analysis of loan portfolio’s we were able to determine […]

40,000 Compromised Accounts at Tesco in 24 Hours

Tesco experienced a significant online fraud breach over the weekend with over 40,000 fraud attempts of customer accounts through their Online Banking channel. Tesco admits that they stopped about 50% of the fraud attempts but 20,000 customer accounts appear to have been compromised with a fraud loss. Customers that had fraud noticed withdrawals from their […]

IRS Bolsters Refund Fraud Defenses, This Year

Fraud is a cat and mouse game. The mouse has one for many years, but it appears the cat may have turned the tables.  By Cat I am referring to the IRS and by mouse I am referring to the fraudsters that have plagued them with fraudulent tax returns. IRS Tax Refund Fraud has been the […]