Podcast: Preventing wire fraud with automation
‘The Buzz’ speaks with CertifID CEO Tyler Adams
Fraudsters found new opportunities in business email compromise scams as bank clients moved assets following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March — that’s when tech providers stepped in.
As virtual transactions become more common, wire fraud is on the rise, Tyler Adams, co-founder and chief executive of Software-as-a-Service fintech CertifID, tells Bank Automation News during this episode of” The Buzz” podcast.
In April, for example, CertifID flagged more than $7.5 million in fraud attempts, Adams said.
CertifID monitors wire transactions and validates wiring instructions to ensure money is being transferred to legitimate accounts.
“Traditional best practices are no longer good enough in the virtual world,” he said, noting that that’s where fraudsters are striking.
Listen as Adams discusses the growth of wire fraud through business email compromise and how automation can protect money movement.
Subscribe to The Buzz Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google podcasts, or download the episode.
The following is a transcript generated by AI technology that has been lightly edited but still contains errors.
Hello and welcome to the buzz of bank automation news podcast. My name is Whitney McDonald and I’m the deputy editor of bank automation news. Joining me today is Tyler Adams, Chief Executive of fraud prevention FinTech certifid. He’s here to discuss how financial institutions can look to technology to monitor and prevent wire fraud.Tyler Adams 0:20
My name is Tyler Adams. I’m the co founder and CEO here at certifid and certifid we started back in 2017. To help prevent wire fraud. We focus or specialize mostly in the real estate segment today. So we found that wire fraud is pretty explosive in real estate transactions. And it’s due to the fact that there’s so many people involved in a transaction from buyer seller, Title Company, law firms lenders, so we ultimately built a product to help protect all the people involved in a real estate transaction from fraud. But since founding in 2017, we’ve seen that fraud has expanded well beyond the reach of the real estate community. And now we’re seeing business email compromised become one of the largest fraud vectors in the country for funds lost every year. And so we’re starting to expand our horizons as a business and grow kind of outside of real estate as well.Whitney McDonald 1:24
If we could dive a little bit deeper into into your growth and maybe talk through the fraud landscape today, why it’s important to have these types of offerings in place for your risk management abilities.
Tyler Adams 1:38
Yeah, so great question. I think what we see is that business email compromise. So this idea that, you know, anybody communicating with somebody could be getting tricked into falling for a scam has become one of the largest sort of fraud vectors that businesses are up against. And one of the things that’s really hard about it, is that they’re they are preying on trust. And in a world where trust is now having to be established, virtually, it becomes more and more challenging for customers to know what they should trust and what they shouldn’t. And one of the reasons why solutions like ours in the market are important is because traditional best practices are no longer good enough in the virtual world. And in addition to that, insurance, and insurance carriers that used to protect against some of these things like cyber insurance, or even, you know, coverage or finding that, you know, their policies have gaps, or that they’re deciding, hey, we can’t insure these particular instances. So there’s a lot of businesses out there right now that are just finding themselves expecting to be covered by an insurance policy or thinking that they have a best practice in place, and ultimately falling for a business email compromised scam, and then realizing that there’s nobody there to save them, and that they unfortunately are now stuck, you know, paying out a monster claim or unfortunately, we see in our business quite often that businesses just simply go out of business as a result of these types of scams.
Whitney McDonald 3:16
Now, speaking of these scams and a rise in the fraud that we’ve seen, especially since the collapse of SBB, folks switching their deposits, switching bank accounts, maybe you can talk through the importance, especially today and what you’re seeing, especially as fraudsters saw some opportunity post SBB.
Tyler Adams 3:37
Yeah, yeah. So you know, when we started this business in 2017, it felt like, everyone thought we were crazy. It was like this fraud will never happen. I don’t know what you’re talking about. We haven’t seen it. And over time, it is slowly started to build up both from an awareness perspective, as well as just the number of cases. And I think COVID was really the first big instance where we saw, you know, a big spike in the amount of fraud that we were seeing in this particular instance. And then SVB was the second major one that we’ve at least seen in the last few years. And so when SPV happened, you know, fraudsters love to prey on uncertainty and panic and any type of stress that happens in a market. And when people started to think that, you know, their bank was no longer safe. A light bulb goes off for the fraudsters, and they think, Alright, this is a great time to strike. And so we know from our data that we saw a rise. I think we reported recently that like 18% increase in fraud attempts amongst our customer base during sort of that period of uncertainty where people were saying, Alright, well, if SPV collapse Well, my regional bank might be next I’m going to change bank accounts. and moved to JPMorgan Chase. Well, now I need to inform everyone who has either received a payment from me or sent me a payment, that my bank information is different. But the fraudsters saw that and thought, well, if legitimate companies are changing their bank instructions, well, we can pose as those companies changing to our bank instructions. And so people started receiving by way of email and other forms of communication, you know, quote, unquote, fake updates to bank account information, where they were posing as what would be a trusted party. And, you know, beyond that, like 18%, that we had quoted previously, I think, three things that stand out to us one, we have a fraud Recovery Services Division certified. So we have software that helps prevent you from ever falling victim. But we also have a team where if you have fallen victim to a crime, we’ll jump in and try to support you and try to help freeze bank accounts and get your money back. We have a strategic relationship with the United States Secret Service that we lean on to support in those efforts. And April was our highest month ever. So April of 2023, we had $5.5 million dollars in losses reported. And another area that we see is payoffs. So specifically, in the real estate world, a mortgage payoff is a heavily coveted sort of payment because of the size of the payment. And we also had our highest month ever, of attempted pay off fraud, one of which was $1.6 million, where we were able to catch it and prevent that fraud from taking place. But in total, I think April was over seven and a half million dollars in payoffs caught by certified.
Whitney McDonald 6:45
Maybe we could get into how the technology works a little bit talking through the automated verification service and how that all works to stop this fraud.
Tyler Adams 6:57
Yep, so we’ve got a couple of different solutions, our main product, so we have sort of two main products, our first product is to help validate and verify anyone involved in a transaction both from an identity perspective, as well as their bank account information. So if you think about acting as sort of Escrow or settlement, someone who is owning a deal, we’ll call it right, where they’re gonna move money between a buyer and a seller. Well, we arm that company with a product that enables them to verify that all the people involved in the transaction are who they say they are, and then that their bank account information is in fact, accurate, and it’s their information. And then what we do is we wrap that all in a million dollar insurance policy. So what we say is, if you use certified to verify and validate anybody involved in a transaction, and we return back to you a, you know, secured by certified status, then we will also ensure that money that’s gonna move between those parties. And so any company who leverages our product, can really leave feeling like okay, there’s no risk here. I’ve validated that these people are who they say they are, that the anchor count information is correct. And if anything goes wrong, certified is on the hook, and they’re taking that risk. So we’ve really filled a void that other products don’t offer and those insurance products that I mentioned, no longer supporting. So it’s enabled us to find a real niche in the market. And give these folks a real opportunity of not falling victim to this type of scam. And then our second product, we we started working on this just a year and a half ago. And this solution is more geared towards the payoff side of things. So you know, in a again, in from a real estate transaction perspective, you’re typically dealing with businesses or individuals who are conducting the transfer of funds. But when it comes to communicating with a lender, anyone who asked to do this on a day to day basis knows that it is a lot more challenging, and can be quite frustrating at times. There’s more than 10,000 real estate or mortgage lenders in the in the nation, and they all have different processes. So what we’ve done is we’ve created a machine learning algorithm, and we’ve created a product that enables us to help verify and validate in real time whether or not a payoff is going to be whether or not a payoff is safe and secure or has potential to be defrauded. And we are now able to validate almost 90% of payoffs across the country instantly for our customers and protect them from what we see as one of the largest fraud landscapes in real estate really because of just again how big the movement of money is. fraudsters are always looking for a quick win and that is certainly one of them that they can get if you’re not prepared.
Whitney McDonald 9:59
You Yes, that’s definitely true, fraudsters get more and more clever, it seems and watch for opportunities like we’ve seen in the past couple of months. Of course, with the technology in mind and what certified offers. But taking a step back, wondering if you could offer some some takeaways or things to watch for, that our audience could really take away from what they’re being claimed should be watching for. Of course, having technology in place is great. And monitoring is great. But the hope is to really avoid fraud at all costs. So what are some things are red flags that that could really be? You could be watching for?
Tyler Adams 10:40
Yeah, you know, we get asked this a lot, because I think that although there’s tons I went to RSA last week or the week before, and it’s like, there are countless number of vendors out there and people trying to solve these problems and say, Hey, use this technology or that technology? And yes, by implementing a technology like certified, can you greatly reduce your risk of falling into these frauds? Absolutely. But is every business that sophisticated or that prepared or know how to do all these things, sometimes it just takes a little bit of time, or unfortunately, it takes a fraud scare, before they’ll actually react. And so one of the things that we always try to do is just harp on education. Because one thing with real estate especially, is really frustrating, and at times really sad, just people aren’t made aware that they are at risk. And I think we all owe it to our customers, whether those are individuals who might be going through a home purchasing process, or just someone who’s about to make a large transfer of funds. And for your banking customers, I’ve started to see it in my banking software, where they just start to warn you I’ve gotten emails in the mail, I’ve heard I’ve gotten emails, I’ve gotten literally mail sent to my house, sometimes pop ups are warning me that, you know, fraud is on the rise. And I think it’s really that that we should all be doing more of because we have so many instances where people have called us after falling victim to a fraud, and just saying, hey, I really wish someone would have just told me that there was a real risk here. And the truth is, is that anyone who’s moving large sums of money electronically, are officially at risk. And they should take this as a warning. And we should all do a better job of really harping on that and just letting them know, because I think if you’re aware at least you’ve been educated, your senses will be heightened. And you’ll be looking out for, you know what it could look like now we can get more technical with that to say, you know, check out to see where every single email is coming from, make sure that email domains are legitimate, don’t click on links that could potentially be phishing, we can go all the way through that. And everyone’s heard all those things. But I think it just starts with the most basic thing, which is just to let people know that there is now a higher risk of, you know, somebody trying to divert your payment. And so if you see anything that’s like, you know, must act now creating urgency pushing you to do something that feels like, slightly uncomfortable from what you had been told previously. These are all moments in time where you got to slow down and ask somebody else. If this is in fact, what the intended sort of next best step was supposed to be. Because, you know, 99 times out of 100, it’s not. And that’s where people are getting tricked. They’re just at a moment in time where, you know, there’s a lot of stress where they’re being asked to do something that ultimately is for a fraudsters benefit, not for the benefit of the actual business transaction that they’re involved in.
Whitney McDonald 13:50
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting that you mentioned that just taking a way step back away from the technology and just communicating that this is you are at risk and just making it clear and hearing that that’s what you’re hearing as well that gosh, I wish I would have known that I was at risk. It kind of simplifies that just communication is is key in that respect.
Tyler Adams 14:18
I was just gonna mention that, you know, we’ve been seeing in our so one of the big things that we’ve been seeing recently is impersonation fraud, which is super interesting. So we’ve been seeing a number of vacant land sales in the United States, where people are showing up and impersonating the owners of those of those pieces of property and then trying to sell them. And one of the things that I think is interesting about that, it’s very scary and there’s like a lot of problems that are arising as a result, but what it reminds me is that it’s fraudsters are not going to stop, like they continue to evolve and SVB happened, you know, a month or two ago. And we’re still seeing fallout from that. But they’re already on to the next thing. And they found that new opportunity where a vacant land that’s for sale in the United States, that may not be being represented appropriately, somebody can go in ultimately try to pretend like they own it, create a fake ID, go link up with a real estate agent and go try to sell it. And they’re being successful. There’s been a number of these that have been successfully done. And the same thing is happening right now. They are going and the people who are getting defrauded as a result are going to claims against their insurance and finding out that their insurance does not cover this type of fraud. And so it just continues to remind me and our team certified, that we’ve got to be pushing every single day to stay one step ahead of where the fraudsters are. And if you’re not a step ahead, you better be right there behind them to react and to be able to change strategies, and again, help educate everyone involved, that they’re on to the next scam, and they’re trying the next thing, because they’re just gonna keep going until they run out or they’re not seeing enough return from that scam, then they’ll change strategies to the next thing. But that’s been one that we’ve gotten asked a ton about recently, and we’ve been fortunate to stop a lot of them utilizing our software, it’s certified. But we’ve also gained a lot of new customers because of them falling victim because they weren’t using a solution like ours. And they were struggling with the identity validation component of these fraudsters.
Whitney McDonald 16:38
Yeah, having both the proactive and reactive approach in place, trying to stay one step ahead. But also being able to react when necessary. Also been pretty bold.
Tyler Adams 16:49
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And I think the other thing, too, and I, I didn’t mention this before, but I think, you know, when we talk about like, banks, and what they could do better on the fraud side, and how they could think about it, I think that there’s this, at least we see it sometimes to where there’s business owners, and maybe banks feel slightly differently, but the the business owners who are leveraging those financial institutions for their commercial purposes, I think sometimes we’re like, Man, I didn’t start my business because I wanted to fight fraud, like, I thought I was just gonna get to deliver a great product and a great service. And now they really do need that support, and they need the support, you know, folks like ours, but also like the financial institutions. And I think one misconception there as well, though, is that like, just because you’re fighting fraud doesn’t mean that it’s always makes a process clunkier or makes it so much worse, it can actually drive efficiencies and improvements to how things are done as well. And I think that we’re going to start to see more and more of that, as this sort of marriage of security and fraud detection happens with the streamline and efficiency practices that everybody’s like, so eager for, I think that there will still always be a little bit more friction than the average consumer would like. But I think it’s for all of our benefit. And I think that comes from the financial institutions as well, sort of educating why, you know, a little bit of friction can be really good to help keep them safe and everyone else involved in a transaction safe. So we’re always walking that balance. But I think that there’s there’s a lot to be gained if we can all kind of get on equal footing of the benefits of a little bit of friction to prevent fraud.
Whitney McDonald 18:46
You’ve been listening to the buzz of bank automation news podcast, please follow us on LinkedIn. And as a reminder, you can rate this podcast on your platform of choice. Thank you for your time and be sure to visit us at Bank automation news.com For more automation news,
Fraudsters found new opportunities in business email compromise scams as bank clients moved assets following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March — that’s when tech providers stepped in.
As virtual transactions become more common, wire fraud is on the rise, Tyler Adams, co-founder and chief executive of Software-as-a-Service fintech CertifID, tells Bank Automation News during this episode of” The Buzz” podcast.
In April, for example, CertifID flagged more than $7.5 million in fraud attempts, Adams said.
CertifID monitors wire transactions and validates wiring instructions to ensure money is being transferred to legitimate accounts.
“Traditional best practices are no longer good enough in the virtual world,” he said, noting that that’s where fraudsters are striking.
Listen as Adams discusses the growth of wire fraud through business email compromise and how automation can protect money movement.
Subscribe to The Buzz Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google podcasts, or download the episode.
The following is a transcript generated by AI technology that has been lightly edited but still contains errors.
Hello and welcome to the buzz of bank automation news podcast. My name is Whitney McDonald and I’m the deputy editor of bank automation news. Joining me today is Tyler Adams, Chief Executive of fraud prevention FinTech certifid. He’s here to discuss how financial institutions can look to technology to monitor and prevent wire fraud.Tyler Adams 0:20
My name is Tyler Adams. I’m the co founder and CEO here at certifid and certifid we started back in 2017. To help prevent wire fraud. We focus or specialize mostly in the real estate segment today. So we found that wire fraud is pretty explosive in real estate transactions. And it’s due to the fact that there’s so many people involved in a transaction from buyer seller, Title Company, law firms lenders, so we ultimately built a product to help protect all the people involved in a real estate transaction from fraud. But since founding in 2017, we’ve seen that fraud has expanded well beyond the reach of the real estate community. And now we’re seeing business email compromised become one of the largest fraud vectors in the country for funds lost every year. And so we’re starting to expand our horizons as a business and grow kind of outside of real estate as well.Whitney McDonald 1:24
If we could dive a little bit deeper into into your growth and maybe talk through the fraud landscape today, why it’s important to have these types of offerings in place for your risk management abilities.
Tyler Adams 1:38
Yeah, so great question. I think what we see is that business email compromise. So this idea that, you know, anybody communicating with somebody could be getting tricked into falling for a scam has become one of the largest sort of fraud vectors that businesses are up against. And one of the things that’s really hard about it, is that they’re they are preying on trust. And in a world where trust is now having to be established, virtually, it becomes more and more challenging for customers to know what they should trust and what they shouldn’t. And one of the reasons why solutions like ours in the market are important is because traditional best practices are no longer good enough in the virtual world. And in addition to that, insurance, and insurance carriers that used to protect against some of these things like cyber insurance, or even, you know, coverage or finding that, you know, their policies have gaps, or that they’re deciding, hey, we can’t insure these particular instances. So there’s a lot of businesses out there right now that are just finding themselves expecting to be covered by an insurance policy or thinking that they have a best practice in place, and ultimately falling for a business email compromised scam, and then realizing that there’s nobody there to save them, and that they unfortunately are now stuck, you know, paying out a monster claim or unfortunately, we see in our business quite often that businesses just simply go out of business as a result of these types of scams.
Whitney McDonald 3:16
Now, speaking of these scams and a rise in the fraud that we’ve seen, especially since the collapse of SBB, folks switching their deposits, switching bank accounts, maybe you can talk through the importance, especially today and what you’re seeing, especially as fraudsters saw some opportunity post SBB.
Tyler Adams 3:37
Yeah, yeah. So you know, when we started this business in 2017, it felt like, everyone thought we were crazy. It was like this fraud will never happen. I don’t know what you’re talking about. We haven’t seen it. And over time, it is slowly started to build up both from an awareness perspective, as well as just the number of cases. And I think COVID was really the first big instance where we saw, you know, a big spike in the amount of fraud that we were seeing in this particular instance. And then SVB was the second major one that we’ve at least seen in the last few years. And so when SPV happened, you know, fraudsters love to prey on uncertainty and panic and any type of stress that happens in a market. And when people started to think that, you know, their bank was no longer safe. A light bulb goes off for the fraudsters, and they think, Alright, this is a great time to strike. And so we know from our data that we saw a rise. I think we reported recently that like 18% increase in fraud attempts amongst our customer base during sort of that period of uncertainty where people were saying, Alright, well, if SPV collapse Well, my regional bank might be next I’m going to change bank accounts. and moved to JPMorgan Chase. Well, now I need to inform everyone who has either received a payment from me or sent me a payment, that my bank information is different. But the fraudsters saw that and thought, well, if legitimate companies are changing their bank instructions, well, we can pose as those companies changing to our bank instructions. And so people started receiving by way of email and other forms of communication, you know, quote, unquote, fake updates to bank account information, where they were posing as what would be a trusted party. And, you know, beyond that, like 18%, that we had quoted previously, I think, three things that stand out to us one, we have a fraud Recovery Services Division certified. So we have software that helps prevent you from ever falling victim. But we also have a team where if you have fallen victim to a crime, we’ll jump in and try to support you and try to help freeze bank accounts and get your money back. We have a strategic relationship with the United States Secret Service that we lean on to support in those efforts. And April was our highest month ever. So April of 2023, we had $5.5 million dollars in losses reported. And another area that we see is payoffs. So specifically, in the real estate world, a mortgage payoff is a heavily coveted sort of payment because of the size of the payment. And we also had our highest month ever, of attempted pay off fraud, one of which was $1.6 million, where we were able to catch it and prevent that fraud from taking place. But in total, I think April was over seven and a half million dollars in payoffs caught by certified.
Whitney McDonald 6:45
Maybe we could get into how the technology works a little bit talking through the automated verification service and how that all works to stop this fraud.
Tyler Adams 6:57
Yep, so we’ve got a couple of different solutions, our main product, so we have sort of two main products, our first product is to help validate and verify anyone involved in a transaction both from an identity perspective, as well as their bank account information. So if you think about acting as sort of Escrow or settlement, someone who is owning a deal, we’ll call it right, where they’re gonna move money between a buyer and a seller. Well, we arm that company with a product that enables them to verify that all the people involved in the transaction are who they say they are, and then that their bank account information is in fact, accurate, and it’s their information. And then what we do is we wrap that all in a million dollar insurance policy. So what we say is, if you use certified to verify and validate anybody involved in a transaction, and we return back to you a, you know, secured by certified status, then we will also ensure that money that’s gonna move between those parties. And so any company who leverages our product, can really leave feeling like okay, there’s no risk here. I’ve validated that these people are who they say they are, that the anchor count information is correct. And if anything goes wrong, certified is on the hook, and they’re taking that risk. So we’ve really filled a void that other products don’t offer and those insurance products that I mentioned, no longer supporting. So it’s enabled us to find a real niche in the market. And give these folks a real opportunity of not falling victim to this type of scam. And then our second product, we we started working on this just a year and a half ago. And this solution is more geared towards the payoff side of things. So you know, in a again, in from a real estate transaction perspective, you’re typically dealing with businesses or individuals who are conducting the transfer of funds. But when it comes to communicating with a lender, anyone who asked to do this on a day to day basis knows that it is a lot more challenging, and can be quite frustrating at times. There’s more than 10,000 real estate or mortgage lenders in the in the nation, and they all have different processes. So what we’ve done is we’ve created a machine learning algorithm, and we’ve created a product that enables us to help verify and validate in real time whether or not a payoff is going to be whether or not a payoff is safe and secure or has potential to be defrauded. And we are now able to validate almost 90% of payoffs across the country instantly for our customers and protect them from what we see as one of the largest fraud landscapes in real estate really because of just again how big the movement of money is. fraudsters are always looking for a quick win and that is certainly one of them that they can get if you’re not prepared.
Whitney McDonald 9:59
You Yes, that’s definitely true, fraudsters get more and more clever, it seems and watch for opportunities like we’ve seen in the past couple of months. Of course, with the technology in mind and what certified offers. But taking a step back, wondering if you could offer some some takeaways or things to watch for, that our audience could really take away from what they’re being claimed should be watching for. Of course, having technology in place is great. And monitoring is great. But the hope is to really avoid fraud at all costs. So what are some things are red flags that that could really be? You could be watching for?
Tyler Adams 10:40
Yeah, you know, we get asked this a lot, because I think that although there’s tons I went to RSA last week or the week before, and it’s like, there are countless number of vendors out there and people trying to solve these problems and say, Hey, use this technology or that technology? And yes, by implementing a technology like certified, can you greatly reduce your risk of falling into these frauds? Absolutely. But is every business that sophisticated or that prepared or know how to do all these things, sometimes it just takes a little bit of time, or unfortunately, it takes a fraud scare, before they’ll actually react. And so one of the things that we always try to do is just harp on education. Because one thing with real estate especially, is really frustrating, and at times really sad, just people aren’t made aware that they are at risk. And I think we all owe it to our customers, whether those are individuals who might be going through a home purchasing process, or just someone who’s about to make a large transfer of funds. And for your banking customers, I’ve started to see it in my banking software, where they just start to warn you I’ve gotten emails in the mail, I’ve heard I’ve gotten emails, I’ve gotten literally mail sent to my house, sometimes pop ups are warning me that, you know, fraud is on the rise. And I think it’s really that that we should all be doing more of because we have so many instances where people have called us after falling victim to a fraud, and just saying, hey, I really wish someone would have just told me that there was a real risk here. And the truth is, is that anyone who’s moving large sums of money electronically, are officially at risk. And they should take this as a warning. And we should all do a better job of really harping on that and just letting them know, because I think if you’re aware at least you’ve been educated, your senses will be heightened. And you’ll be looking out for, you know what it could look like now we can get more technical with that to say, you know, check out to see where every single email is coming from, make sure that email domains are legitimate, don’t click on links that could potentially be phishing, we can go all the way through that. And everyone’s heard all those things. But I think it just starts with the most basic thing, which is just to let people know that there is now a higher risk of, you know, somebody trying to divert your payment. And so if you see anything that’s like, you know, must act now creating urgency pushing you to do something that feels like, slightly uncomfortable from what you had been told previously. These are all moments in time where you got to slow down and ask somebody else. If this is in fact, what the intended sort of next best step was supposed to be. Because, you know, 99 times out of 100, it’s not. And that’s where people are getting tricked. They’re just at a moment in time where, you know, there’s a lot of stress where they’re being asked to do something that ultimately is for a fraudsters benefit, not for the benefit of the actual business transaction that they’re involved in.
Whitney McDonald 13:50
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting that you mentioned that just taking a way step back away from the technology and just communicating that this is you are at risk and just making it clear and hearing that that’s what you’re hearing as well that gosh, I wish I would have known that I was at risk. It kind of simplifies that just communication is is key in that respect.
Tyler Adams 14:18
I was just gonna mention that, you know, we’ve been seeing in our so one of the big things that we’ve been seeing recently is impersonation fraud, which is super interesting. So we’ve been seeing a number of vacant land sales in the United States, where people are showing up and impersonating the owners of those of those pieces of property and then trying to sell them. And one of the things that I think is interesting about that, it’s very scary and there’s like a lot of problems that are arising as a result, but what it reminds me is that it’s fraudsters are not going to stop, like they continue to evolve and SVB happened, you know, a month or two ago. And we’re still seeing fallout from that. But they’re already on to the next thing. And they found that new opportunity where a vacant land that’s for sale in the United States, that may not be being represented appropriately, somebody can go in ultimately try to pretend like they own it, create a fake ID, go link up with a real estate agent and go try to sell it. And they’re being successful. There’s been a number of these that have been successfully done. And the same thing is happening right now. They are going and the people who are getting defrauded as a result are going to claims against their insurance and finding out that their insurance does not cover this type of fraud. And so it just continues to remind me and our team certified, that we’ve got to be pushing every single day to stay one step ahead of where the fraudsters are. And if you’re not a step ahead, you better be right there behind them to react and to be able to change strategies, and again, help educate everyone involved, that they’re on to the next scam, and they’re trying the next thing, because they’re just gonna keep going until they run out or they’re not seeing enough return from that scam, then they’ll change strategies to the next thing. But that’s been one that we’ve gotten asked a ton about recently, and we’ve been fortunate to stop a lot of them utilizing our software, it’s certified. But we’ve also gained a lot of new customers because of them falling victim because they weren’t using a solution like ours. And they were struggling with the identity validation component of these fraudsters.
Whitney McDonald 16:38
Yeah, having both the proactive and reactive approach in place, trying to stay one step ahead. But also being able to react when necessary. Also been pretty bold.
Tyler Adams 16:49
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And I think the other thing, too, and I, I didn’t mention this before, but I think, you know, when we talk about like, banks, and what they could do better on the fraud side, and how they could think about it, I think that there’s this, at least we see it sometimes to where there’s business owners, and maybe banks feel slightly differently, but the the business owners who are leveraging those financial institutions for their commercial purposes, I think sometimes we’re like, Man, I didn’t start my business because I wanted to fight fraud, like, I thought I was just gonna get to deliver a great product and a great service. And now they really do need that support, and they need the support, you know, folks like ours, but also like the financial institutions. And I think one misconception there as well, though, is that like, just because you’re fighting fraud doesn’t mean that it’s always makes a process clunkier or makes it so much worse, it can actually drive efficiencies and improvements to how things are done as well. And I think that we’re going to start to see more and more of that, as this sort of marriage of security and fraud detection happens with the streamline and efficiency practices that everybody’s like, so eager for, I think that there will still always be a little bit more friction than the average consumer would like. But I think it’s for all of our benefit. And I think that comes from the financial institutions as well, sort of educating why, you know, a little bit of friction can be really good to help keep them safe and everyone else involved in a transaction safe. So we’re always walking that balance. But I think that there’s there’s a lot to be gained if we can all kind of get on equal footing of the benefits of a little bit of friction to prevent fraud.
Whitney McDonald 18:46
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