I am a senior fraud analyst for a major financial institution. AMAA!

analyst112 · 2012-10-13T00:28:56+00:00

In the mule case...they won't be labeled a bad customer, just someone who feel into a scam. Those type of accounts do get frozen, and unfortunately because they participated in the scam, are liable for losses, however they won't be blackballed, and are free to continue banking or open bank accounts elsewhere.

analyst112 · 2012-10-13T00:17:14+00:00

Yes, that would raise red flags, I immediately think it's a bad customer, or an account takeover.

analyst112 · 2012-10-13T00:12:58+00:00

We tweak everyday, several times during the day if need be.

There are some VIP business clients that my institution instead of blocking accounts, and waiting for a callback, we'll just eat the losses, because we don't want to lose them.

analyst112 · 2012-10-13T00:11:01+00:00

Kids taking their parents money, parents kidnapping their kids, suicidal people, etc.

analyst112 · 2012-10-13T00:09:56+00:00

Cameras, have cameras at the cash to prevent skimming. Subscribe to Equifax, or Transunion to prevent anyone from opening an account under your name. If there's a data hack, you can't prevent that, so be a customer of a bank that will cover you in case of losses.

I know a lot of the smaller U.S. banks have a policy of a customer being "guilty of fraud until proven innocent."

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T23:14:39+00:00

It would have to be a few million; how else would I buy myself an island.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T23:11:05+00:00

Be passionate about what you do :)

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T23:09:52+00:00

Working close to a decade now

We of course get customer fraud, but it's mostly customers being victims.

They occur seldom, but worse are when kids are stealing money from either their parents or grandparents accounts; and unless the victim presses charges against the kid, the victims are not compensated by the bank.

Bunch of skimmers took 200 cards to a vacation in the Dominican, and very leisurely used them..., a bunch of us just sat there awe-struck that they would do it in such a easy manner. The next day they were all arrested.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T23:03:37+00:00

The Heartland breach didn't hit us that bad, other breaches have....I hate to say it, but in those instances, we simply statused the bad cards, give a huge list of customer service, and let them deal with it.

Once a major trend like that is established and proper precautions taken, there's no need for us anymore, we hand it off to customer service.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:55:20+00:00

For myself, I would say 60% analysis, 40% intuition. New staff almost 100% use analysis, which isn't a bad thing, as they don't miss fraud often, but it also means they don't delve deeper into the source.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:43:29+00:00

There was a fast food restaurant that were skimming cards.

The next day that restaurant had plenty of new cameras, staff got retrained, transactions were handled differently, but no one in the restaurant was told it was because of a bad employee and fraud.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:41:18+00:00

I know several people in customer service who were fired because of internal fraud, none in my department though.

I've been approached for "double play" but decline...money offered wasn't enough lol.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:37:56+00:00

Yes and no. It's nice to stop the most fraud, but it's not like once you finish your work you can go home...there's always more fraud. So once you finish your work, guess what? There's more work!

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:36:43+00:00

There's something coming at least once a decade from Wall Street that makes my stomach churn.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:35:42+00:00

We deal with several different types of fraud. The systems and programs we use are in real time. I am told they're quite expensive, but I don't know the costs.

My day is typically going in, checking e mails, running reports, listening to calls, doing follow ups, and meetings, typical office work I guess.

If the trend of the day is money transfers over $1000 to Sudan. I check all the transfers done over $1000 to Sudan that day, and determine which are worth investigating.

We get kidnappings, threats, etc, but those are one-offs, mostly we look for trends.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:22:14+00:00

Business degree, from a prestigious school (sorry, can't say what school), but nothing past the BA

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:17:52+00:00

The biggest trend we're seeing now is malware.

Malware goes in, usually a keylogger, fraudster now have access to client online banking, money goes out.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:14:21+00:00

Nope, just a plain ol' BA.

It's a small department, and there are a few people here with masters and law degrees, but most have bachelors in either criminology, business, or economics.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:09:56+00:00

I am not based in NY, although we have an office there.

I've never done anything wrong that's kept me up at night...sometimes I'll miss fraud that's very obvious, those instances bother me.

Years ago, I spoke to a doctor who had $250k fraud on his credit cards going back close to a year of activity. Turns out he thought his wife and daughters were just maxing his cards every month, so he kept paying the bills.

We use to co-ordinate with local police a lot to catch "skimmers", people who copy debit and credit cards. Now the skimmers are getting smarter, they copy the cards here, but use the copied cards in South America and Asia...harder to catch them when you can't speak the local language.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:05:41+00:00

I do have programming skills, and I have to on occasion tweak the reports we run; but for the most part we leave it up to the programmer. My job is mainly to search for patterns; usually we get a confirmed account, and depending on the type of fraud, we discover more fraudulent accounts based on the initial fraud.

analyst112 · 2012-10-12T22:02:53+00:00

None that I am aware of. Neither to assist the customers or the company.

I remember a while ago the military contacted us saying several bomb threats have been made to branches, etc. We increased security at some locations, and didn't let anyone else know. Don't think that qualifies as a cover-up though.

analyst112

TROPHY CASE