Practitioner Knowledge Repository

Fraud Risk:
A Practitioner's Perspective

In-depth analysis of fraud prevention strategy, typology, product risk, and organizational design — written for senior practitioners, compliance leaders, and institutions building durable fraud defenses.

6Articles published & planned
4Topic domains
2Standalone deep-dives

The Fraud Risk Practitioner's Handbook

A five-part series building from typology fundamentals through to strategic operating model design and continuous improvement.

5-part series
1
Know Your Enemy: A Practitioner's Guide to Fraud Typologies
First-party vs third-party fraud, synthetic identity, mule networks, bust-out schemes, account takeover, and authorized push payment scams — the threat landscape every practitioner must understand before designing any defense.
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2
The Fraud Function: Operating Within the Business
How fraud, product, marketing, credit risk, and AML must interact — and what happens when they don't. Covers the competing institutional logics, the four recurring failure modes, and the governance architecture that prevents them.
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3
Product Risk Profiles: Tailoring Defense to the Battleground
Consumer loans, deposit accounts, and cards each carry distinct fraud profiles shaped by velocity, liquidity, and reversibility. Maps product-specific key risk indicators and the control designs best suited to each.
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4
The Technology Stack: Models, Decisioning & the Vendor Landscape
A practitioner's guide to the tools that power fraud defense — ML models, rule engines, real-time decisioning, identity verification vendors, device intelligence, and consortium data.
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5
Building the Fraud Defense: From Zero to Continuous Enhancement
The full maturity arc — from greenfield function design to transformation of a legacy setup. Covers operating model, vendor selection, model governance, KPI design, and the disciplines that separate static programs from adaptive ones.
Read →
Upstream detection
Stopping Fraud Before It Starts
Why upstream detection is a competitive necessity, not just a compliance posture. Consumer loans and deposits as the highest-velocity fraud products. The precision-first signal detection framework and the false positive imperative.
Emerging threats
The Deepfake Frontier
How generative AI is dismantling biometric liveness, document authenticity, and voice authentication — and why the governance cadence for fraud detection must change fundamentally in response.
New to fraud risk
Start with the foundations
Article 1 (typologies) → Article 3 (product risk) → Stopping Fraud Before It Starts
Leaders & managers
Governance & operating model
Article 2 (fraud function) → Article 5 (building defenses) → then the full series
Risk practitioners
Detection & defense design
Stopping Fraud → Article 3 (product risk) → Deepfake Frontier
Technologists
AI & emerging threats
Deepfake Frontier → Article 4 (tech stack, coming) → Article 5

About the author

Fraud risk practitioner with experience across consumer banking products, including deposits, consumer lending, and cards. This repository brings together original analysis on fraud prevention strategy, fraud typologies, operating models, and organizational design.

The writing is practitioner-focused — grounded in how fraud organizations actually operate in practice, rather than how they are described in policy frameworks or regulatory guidance.

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These articles are living documents. If you have a perspective on methodology, a case study to share, or a topic you would like to see covered — reach out.