Fraud is Now an Industry. Here's How It Works

André Ferraz, Incognia's CEO and Co-Founder, has spent his career building technology to stop fraud. Last year he was defrauded himself, on a vacation rental, by a photo somebody edited with AI.

That is where this series starts. Fraud is now the largest single category of crime in England and Wales, it moved 442 billion dollars out of victims' accounts in a single year, and almost none of it looks like a hacker in a hoodie. It is an industry, with suppliers, specialists and better unit economics than most of the businesses trying to stop it.

In episode one, payments strategist Dwayne Gefferie puts seventeen questions to André Ferraz, CEO and Co-Founder of Incognia: what fraud actually is now, where the money goes the second it leaves your account, who ends up absorbing the cost, and what still gives it away when the transaction breaks no rules at all.

Including one case found inside a bank's own customer base: 200 devices, operating 4,500 accounts, out of a single apartment. The bank was looking straight at it and counted 4,500 ordinary customers.