00:18:09 --> 00:18:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Right. Thank you very much for — I probably shouldn't — sorry? It's not on. It's not on.

00:18:17 --> 00:18:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Now, testing, testing, 1, 2, 3. Can you hear me? Very good. Um, uh, so apologies about that. Um, that was a user error. Um, so, um, uh, so first of all, thank you very much for joining us. This is hopefully going to be a really interesting panel.

00:18:32 --> 00:18:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, you don't get panels like this everywhere.

00:18:45 --> 00:19:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What we are really keen to do is to have a conversation between regulators about how regulation works in different jurisdictions and how regulators can empower industry, not just stifle or limit them, but how can we empower industry to go.

00:19:02 --> 00:19:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: as far as possible on fighting fraud and scams. We've got a fantastic panel. I will let them introduce themselves in a second. But before we start, I just wanted to say thank you for joining us and thank you for participating in this dialogue.

00:19:17 --> 00:19:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We will run this in a 40-minute panel discussion. We've got a series of questions, and then 20-minute debates with the audience. So please do come up with questions. Really keen to have a robust debate about how regulation can help.

00:19:32 --> 00:19:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you guys and unlock you guys in doing the things that you need to do to fight fraud and scams. So with that, over, I'd like to introduce the panel, starting with Ashish.

00:19:44 --> 00:20:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thanks, Andre. Ashish Kumar, Deputy Executive Secretary, Financial Action Task Force based in Paris. For those of you who don't know FATF, it's a global standard setter for combating money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing. We also set.

00:20:00 --> 00:20:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: our own reports on risk and analysis, we also write guidance and best practices, and finally, we do mutual evaluations of countries to hold them accountable for implementation. So this, in brief, is all about me. Thanks.

00:20:15 --> 00:20:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Over to you, Patsy, Patsy.

00:20:18 --> 00:20:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: OK, hi. So my name is Patty Hsu. I am the chief of staff for the Division of Marketing Practices at the Federal Trade Commission. It's essentially the fraud division within the FTC. And if you are not familiar with the FTC, we are the primary federal consumer protection agency in the US.

00:20:34 --> 00:20:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And we have a broad jurisdiction, but one of the chief sort of priorities that we deal with is fraud and scams. And I did want to just call out my colleague in the front row here, Lorraine Capon, who is the Deputy Director for International Consumer Protection, and she leads our cross-border work.

00:20:52 --> 00:21:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Hi there, good afternoon everyone, I'm Lucy Carseldine, I am the Director of Consumer Investments at the Financial Conduct Authority back in the UK, so dealing with all the regulated firms that deal with investments, but I think really importantly for this part of the conversation as well.

00:21:07 --> 00:21:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I've got the joy of policing the UK's perimeter for bad actors that are either purposefully or inadvertently straying into giving regulated advice and dealing with some of the biggest sort of frauds and scams that we see on the UK soil as well.

00:21:24 --> 00:21:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Fantastic. So with that, over onto our discussion. So scams are a fundamentally complex, rapidly evolving and changing threat. So first question to Ashish. Are scams fundamentally a technology problem?

00:21:41 --> 00:21:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, an enforcement problem, or a coordination problem?

00:21:44 --> 00:22:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That's an easy one, I think, because there can't be any argument that it's not all three of it. I mean, technology problem because technology has allowed a small scale, you know, street crime into fraud epidemic, which I think the whole world is worried about.

00:22:00 --> 00:22:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: not just countries, but also G20, it's also about FATF, it is also, you know, become to such an extent that it's considered as a national security threat or strategic threat for many, many countries. So this is something which technology has allowed, and this is something which our own.

00:22:15 --> 00:22:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: work during the last four or five years has sort of indicated, you know, in terms of how cyber-enabled fraud, for example, has ballooned into, you know, completely different proportions, which we are talking about today. It has also sort of, you know, led to a situation where fraud is right at the top of our priority because of the technological innovations in terms of how we should address that, so for sure.

00:22:35 --> 00:22:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: technology is a problem. Uh, it's a challenge, I won't say it's a problem, it's a challenge because of how technology innovations have enabled fraud to become fraud epidemic. That's an issue I think we are talking about.

00:22:45 --> 00:23:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Enforcement problem, for sure, because when, uh, law enforcement is sort of, you know, grappling with is still, uh, you know, getting a lot of compliance reports, but not necessarily… not necessarily actionable intelligence, or right intelligence, that's something which sort of, you know, uh, you know, makes it impossible, or at least challenging for…

00:23:02 --> 00:23:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: law enforcement to sort of, you know, take cases into logical conclusions, because we see more and more instances where, you know, it's not just a national crime, it's a cross-border crime. And the more sort of money moves out of the country, the more difficult it becomes to get the right input in terms of addressing some of those challenges.

00:23:20 --> 00:23:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, coordination problem, because we are still talking about, you know, fragmented information flow, not just to law enforcement, but also to financial intelligence units, for example, or coordination between different parts of the eco-fraud ecosystem. You know, we are talking about financial institutions, we are talking about crypto exchanges, we are also talking about.

00:23:37 --> 00:23:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: non-traditional, you know, players, like social, you know, social media companies, telecom providers, and networks, and all those stuff. So I think it's a combination of all three of it, but coordination is really the crux, because it has made life so difficult for.

00:23:52 --> 00:23:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Everybody to get to the root of the problem.

00:23:55 --> 00:24:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Fantastic. Thank you, Ashish. Um, Patty, um, uh, Lucy, your views? Yeah, I, I completely agree. I think it's all three, um, and I think, you know, technology's kind of an obvious answer. Everybody has already been discussing how technology has been turbocharging fraud. Um, I think law enforcement is a real challenge, just because we have really.

00:24:12 --> 00:24:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: resource constraints. And the scale of the problem is so large and the cross-border nature of the problem is so difficult to address that I think really it comes down to collaboration, as she says. We really need to collaborate across all fronts. We need to collaborate across all industries and all sectors.

00:24:28 --> 00:24:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And I think one thing, in the U.S. at least, that hasn't been as focused on is there's a lot of focus on law enforcement, but there's not as much focus on the civil regulators and the regulatory frameworks that also need to be included in the conversation and aren't necessarily at the forefront of that mindset. And so that's one area that I think really.

00:24:47 --> 00:24:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Needs to have more being done.

00:24:52 --> 00:24:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I'm not going to repeat what everyone else said.

00:24:54 --> 00:25:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Fair enough. And Patty, you talk about coordination. What's the role of incentive setting in the regulatory and enforcement approach? How do you do it? Where do you see market failure that you feel like is not being adequately addressed?

00:25:09 --> 00:25:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I'm not asking you to disclose, you know, all the various cases you're working on, but, uh, strategically, where are the issues in the system?

00:25:19 --> 00:25:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, so I think from our perspective, um, we really address fraud from 3 different, um, sort of frameworks. We look at it from a law enforcement perspective, and we also look at it from consumer education and outreach. We also look at it from an industry collaboration perspective, and all 3.

00:25:34 --> 00:25:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: are important components in the fraud fight. Um, I think for us.

00:25:39 --> 00:25:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: In terms of how we can actually affect incentives and market behavior and really, bad behavior, it's really primarily from our law enforcement, efforts. We are a civil law enforcement agency, though we are not a criminal law enforcement agency. So our tools are somewhat limited when it comes to the scam fight.

00:25:56 --> 00:26:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So for us, you know, we do go after the bad actors. I think when it comes to civil law enforcement, we get as far as you can when it comes to, you know, getting up to the border of criminal law enforcement. We can't put people in jail, but we do undercover investigations. We file ex parte cases.

00:26:11 --> 00:26:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We get receiverships and temporary restraining orders over bad actors to halt the bad behavior. We can get asset freezes to sort of freeze the assets so we can get it back to consumers at the end of the day. And when we are concluding our litigations, we also get conduct bans that prohibit the bad actor from continuing in that same behavior in the future.

00:26:30 --> 00:26:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, for example, in a recent law enforcement case that we filed last year, it was an IRS imposter scam that was basically impostering the IRS to sell debt relief services. We basically filed a case. We stopped the bad business. We got, I think, about $10 million in redress for consumers.

00:26:48 --> 00:27:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And, um, the defendants are now under conduct bans where they cannot continue, um, selling debt relief services, and they also cannot continue telemarketing. Um, now, that, of course, is not going to stop the bad behavior from foreign scammers, and it's not going to stop the bad behavior from, um, really criminal activity.

00:27:06 --> 00:27:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And so one other area that we do look at for our law enforcement is we look at companies in the U.S. or that have a touch point to our U.S. system that enable the fraud. They really look at, you know, companies that may be facilitating the fraud or are profiting from the fraud by enabling the scammer to connect with consumers.

00:27:24 --> 00:27:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So one area we look at is in our payment processing space. We've brought a lot of cases against payment processors that help foreign scammers connect with consumers. So last year, we filed a case against Paddle, which was a UK-based payment processor who, um, was enabling Cyprus-based tech support scammers to steal.

00:27:42 --> 00:27:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: hundreds of millions of dollars from American consumers. So that is one area that we have really tried to sort of shift the bad behavior. But on the policy front, I would say we also look at a lot of our data analysis from our consumer reports that we receive from consumers.

00:27:58 --> 00:28:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And that is another way that we can kind of shift and highlight sort of the fraud trends that are happening. So, for example, um, we do a lot of, um, data spotlights where we identify emerging fraud trends. Um, so, for example, early this summer, um, or actually rather this spring, we released a data spotlight on.

00:28:16 --> 00:28:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, the rise of social media as a touchpoint for scams, um, we identify that it's increased about 8 times since 2020 in the U.S, and I think consumers reported about $2 billion in losses, um, to scams that start on social media.

00:28:31 --> 00:28:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Various ways that we are able to put that information out to the public, alert the public to the fraud trends, but also put industry on notice as to where additional action is needed.

00:28:43 --> 00:28:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, I think just to build on that a little bit, so from a UK perspective, sort of thinking about the prevent strategy, that's probably the area where we see sort of the biggest failings at the moment.

00:28:59 --> 00:29:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, we're pretty good at disruption. We're pretty good at enforcing, um, where we, uh, choose to, to, to, to make the right cases. But disruption, uh, it's, it's, it's whack-a-mole, uh, and you, you cannot do it with the volume that we're seeing. From a, um, from a.

00:29:14 --> 00:29:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: a prosecution perspective, you know, we're now getting court dates into 2028, 2029. We can't prosecute our way out of frauds and scams, which is why the prevent has got to be the main focus. And I think that's probably across, across the piece. Um, too many harmful and fraudulent adverts.

00:29:31 --> 00:29:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: are seen by consumers um and actually that's you know we say it very publicly we need big tech to step up we've had some I've had some great conversations here today and I'm actually I'm hopeful I am hopeful but we can own we need to keep that information sharing and we'll come on to that a little bit later.

00:29:46 --> 00:30:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Because we're sort of seeing typologies, we're sharing typologies, but they change, and they change so quickly and so fast that we need the two-way feed. So for me, the one big area that we need to all focus on as an ecosystem is prevent. Thanks, Lucy.

00:30:02 --> 00:30:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: With that in mind, um, I mean, you've… thank you for starting to talk about this. I'm pretty slightly preempting my next question. Um, we need to know… to have an effective intervention, we need to know what works and what doesn't work.

00:30:14 --> 00:30:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Do you have any examples of a regulatory intervention which you thought did really well in the space, and one which you thought would work, but didn't?

00:30:22 --> 00:30:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, so you've asked me to name one from each. I might…

00:30:27 --> 00:30:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Two is okay. I might go with two, but I'll start with one. So one of the initiatives that we have seen in the UK is the APP push payment fraud scheme, which is basically where a consumer has been subject to a push payment fraud.

00:30:44 --> 00:30:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the sending bank and the receiving bank, um, have to reimburse the money up to £85,000. Now.

00:30:53 --> 00:31:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You know, we're sort of talking here about the incentives. The incentive there is if the banks don't get their fraud prevention and detection correct, they're gonna have, they're gonna be hit in the pocket, right? So actually what we're seeing there is a real shift and move into the infrastructure.

00:31:10 --> 00:31:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: behind fraud detection, fraud prevention, and I did write down a few stats, because I think data's always, always helpful. Um, we've just undertaken a review, so the APP push payment fraud scheme came in in 2024.

00:31:23 --> 00:31:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: from our sort of sister regulator, the payment systems regulator. Um, and we've seen that losses have fallen 21%, so around 73 million. Uh, and also, I think really, really importantly, we're seeing that from the, uh, claims that consumers are putting in, um, under the APP push payment fraud scheme.

00:31:41 --> 00:31:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: 97% of them are getting reimbursed. Um, so that's, that's one that I do think is working, is working particularly well, but it talks to the incentive and I think that's the really, really important bit around actually how do you prevent this from happening in the first place?

00:31:56 --> 00:32:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The other one which I will just call out in terms of what I have seen well work particularly well was a lot of work that certainly from a UK regulator perspective and we were actually having a conversation about it sort of over lunchtime was the work that we did with Google many many years ago now.

00:32:13 --> 00:32:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, where I call it their financial services fin problem policy. There's a much more technical term than that, and they'll probably shout at me for calling it that. But, uh, very much a blanket, um, approach. You know, you have to be an FCA-authorized firm to advertise for financial services. Um, blanket approach, and we saw pretty much 100% scam ads.

00:32:33 --> 00:32:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: um, to when they implemented that policy to virtually zero overnight. Um, so I, I'd, I'd call that out. And actually, we're seeing other, uh, major social media, um, uh, we have seen other, uh.

00:32:44 --> 00:32:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: major social media platforms follow suit with varying degrees of success.

00:32:52 --> 00:33:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, you've also asked, sort of, one which I don't think maybe necessarily is working as well as it could. Um, now we've touched… someone sort of touched on it briefly in one of the sessions this morning. In the UK, we've got something called the Online Safety Act, which another one of our fellow regulators, Ofcom.

00:33:11 --> 00:33:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: um, uh, are overseeing. Great initiative. Uh, but under that, we've been, um, uh, listed as a trusted flagger. Now, again, what that means is that we get to flag to Ofcom after the event where we are seeing harmful content.

00:33:27 --> 00:33:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So again, if I go back to what's the incentive there, there probably is… there's less of an incentive because it's us feeding back after the event rather than it actually being preventing from being there in the first place. Very, very early days there. We work in…

00:33:44 --> 00:33:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: really, really close quarters with Ofcom, um, uh, so actually, we'll hopefully be able to feedback on that process, um, as we work through, but at the moment, proof will be in the pudding.

00:33:56 --> 00:33:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Fair enough, thank you. Ashish, Patty?

00:34:01 --> 00:34:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Well, in that case, um, I think let's come to the topic of every single fraud conversation ever, which is data sharing and information sharing. I mean, every conversation about fraud is ultimately a conversation about information sharing.

00:34:12 --> 00:34:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um…

00:34:14 --> 00:34:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: kind of what information are you guys seeing or not seeing, or would you like to see both industry share amongst themselves, but also share with yourselves? Ashish, Lucy, Ashish, you've got the mic.

00:34:27 --> 00:34:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, probably I can start first.

00:34:30 --> 00:34:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It's funny, because this is an issue which has been on the table for, I think, for at least 10 to 12 years. I still remember in 2017, even when we were writing our first private sector information sharing, this was the same issue that we should be talking about more information sharing, we should be talking about.

00:34:46 --> 00:35:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: public-private partnership, we should be talking beyond what the standards allow in terms of information if you want to fight financial crimes. And the same discussion is after nine years, which we are still having a panel on. So I think what we're talking about here is not just the information which financial institutions can share.

00:35:02 --> 00:35:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We're talking about the entire gamut of information which exists outside the traditional financial system. For example, a lot of, as we talked about earlier, that disruption strategy is probably not the right one in terms of addressing financial crime or fraud in particular, because by that time.

00:35:17 --> 00:35:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the money has already gone, you know, from the victims to the financial institutions, and probably within a matter of seconds, it will move borders, and it will be out of reach of the law enforcement. So how can we prevent, you know, even that fact to happen? And that is something where, you know, all those information which resides with non-traditional institutions, like, you know.

00:35:36 --> 00:35:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: social media, like, you know, telecommunication networks, like, you know, other platforms, you know, that's something which I think law enforcement still doesn't get sufficient access to, and that is where I think the bottleneck lies in terms of whether the law enforcement has got the right access to information, and whether.

00:35:52 --> 00:36:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You know, it's able to prevent the fraud from happening rather than just to do investigation or prosecution, which is like a lost battle in any case after it happens.

00:36:03 --> 00:36:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I'm going to talk about it more from a law enforcement perspective. I think one of the challenges that we have is getting information from the industry in a manner and a timeliness that is actually going to be helpful for our law enforcement. So we do get the information we need, but it takes an arduous subpoena process that can take months, which just really bogs down our law enforcement.

00:36:23 --> 00:36:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and it's one area that I really think it would be helpful if there could be more dialogue, um, around how industry could be providing information to law enforcement in a manner that's actually helpful.

00:36:34 --> 00:36:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, on the flip side, I also just want to flag, there are a large number of industry players who will not maintain confidentiality if you subpoena them for information about their targets. Now, that is a real bottleneck for those of us who do undercover investigations. If we can't get the information we need because you're going to disclose it to the target, then we can't actually stop the bad behavior.

00:36:53 --> 00:37:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, I understand, you know, there are lots of various policy reasons and whatnot as to why people do that. There are lots of exceptions usually made for criminal law enforcement, but very few for civil law enforcement. So that is one thing I'm just gonna flag for you all, um, to the extent you can do anything about it.

00:37:10 --> 00:37:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you. Um, I thought it's a really interesting set of, uh, answers there, and not the usual… not necessarily the usual ones we normally get in these sorts of conversations.

00:37:18 --> 00:37:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, public-private partnerships, the next, kind of, another, kind of, oft-quoted thing. What's your view on public-private partnerships? I mean, what's their role in the regulatory approach? What, kind of.

00:37:29 --> 00:37:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What is the best way of getting industry and regulators to work together? How do we construct the right incentives to deliver the right outcomes?

00:37:40 --> 00:37:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think for Financial Action Task Force, public partnership and information sharing is right at the top of priorities to fight financial crime. This is something which is a priority for the UK presidency of FIATF. This is also a priority for Financial Action Task Force in terms of its own strategy and its own work program. So this is something which we are looking at more closely.

00:37:58 --> 00:38:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: In terms of how we can…

00:38:01 --> 00:38:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, move it from a pilot project to something which is, like, the norm, because that's something which we've already seen in many countries, that PPP was started as a pilot project to sort of, you know, test the water, whether it is working or not. And we have reached a maturity level where we are seeing some real success stories, you know.

00:38:16 --> 00:38:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: not just in the national context, but also in the context of, you know, maybe regional alliances. We are seeing, you know, how good, you know, Frontier Plus, for example, which is a combination, which is a sort of alliance of 11 odd countries, you know, producing results in terms of, you know, upping the scale quite a bit, not just keeping it at a.

00:38:32 --> 00:38:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: at a national level, but beyond, moving beyond that, sharing information between law enforcement and private sector across countries, across regions. So we have moved the stage, I think we have moved the needle quite a bit in terms of last few years, in terms of not just looking at public-private partnership as an idea.

00:38:48 --> 00:39:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: but also looking at it, how we can scale it up to a level where we just not talk about it at national context, but also sort of connect the dots in the international context and make it cross-border. And that's something which we'll be looking at more closely in terms of our own approach when we sort of move to, uh.

00:39:03 --> 00:39:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the second part of our fraud project, which is about implementing the FATF toolkit. What are the measures? How we can have more ambitious approach? Rather than keeping the status quo, we can probably be more proactive and move the needle a bit in terms of expectations for countries in the private sector.

00:39:20 --> 00:39:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: To really get better in terms of fighting fraud.

00:39:23 --> 00:39:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I mean, I, for one, would certainly not want to be talking about information sharing in 9 years' time from now. I think that would be quite… quite a depressing… depressing proposition. Um, uh, kind of public-private partnerships? Lucy? Yeah, I was just gonna add on that a little bit, um, which is… certainly from…

00:39:38 --> 00:39:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: my own organization's perspective, for me, it's about leading by example.

00:39:43 --> 00:39:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, if I'm not willing to share the information, share the typologies, share the types of frauds and scams that I'm seeing with platforms, with banks, um, then, um…

00:39:57 --> 00:40:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: like Andre says, we're probably still going to be talking about this in 9 years' time. So, for me, it's about leading by example. Um…

00:40:04 --> 00:40:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We've been trying to share some of the typologies of some of the frauds and scams that we see with social media platforms in the hope that they will be more proactive in terms of finding them and taking them down before they perhaps grow into the size of some of the frauds and scams that we see.

00:40:21 --> 00:40:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And I think as long as we continue to do that, and we continue to lead by example, as law enforcement agencies and regulators, you know, we talk about public-private, but actually private-private partnerships as well. And actually, you know, it's just about sharing the information in the full ecosystem.

00:40:40 --> 00:40:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, definitely a journey. I'm not a big fan of that word, but it definitely is a journey. But I'm hopeful that we won't be here, maybe even in two years' time, having the same conversation, but certainly not nine.

00:40:57 --> 00:41:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You have probably more optimism on that one than I do. Great. So AI, I mean, it's definitely the kind of the watchword of last year, this year, and probably next year as well. How should regulators think about AI-enabled scams in a different way?

00:41:16 --> 00:41:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Okay, you're not gonna like my answer then, based on that prompt. I actually, from my perspective, and I actually just realized I should have said this at the very beginning, that the views are my own and not that of the commission, or of any individual commissioner, or any part of the FTC, but… We can add that bit in at the beginning of the recording. But from my perspective.

00:41:37 --> 00:41:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You know, realistically speaking.

00:41:39 --> 00:41:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Fraud is fraud. Scams are scams. It doesn't really matter if they use AI to perpetrate the fraud. It's the same sort of activity. And for us, we really look at it from what can we do from a law enforcement perspective. So yes, AI can certainly turbocharge fraud.

00:41:56 --> 00:42:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But on the flip side, we also see that AI can be a huge tool in the fraud fight, right? And so our agency has spent, you know, many years sort of spurring technological innovations in various spaces. We've had multiple public challenges where we really challenge the public to come up with.

00:42:13 --> 00:42:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: creative tools to do things like block robocalls. We had an AI voice cloning challenge to address AI imposter scams. And so we really try to figure out ways to help industry along and to create those tools that are really needed in the fraud fight.

00:42:29 --> 00:42:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: On the flip side, for our law enforcement, one thing that we really do is we try to make sure that we keep a clear marketplace free of fraudsters. There are a lot of fraudsters that are trying to peddle on the promise of AI, and we have brought a lot of cases against those companies that are trying to sell, you know, the promise of AI to.

00:42:47 --> 00:42:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, make it seem like it's gonna do some magic bullet to help consumers earn money, but realistically speaking, it's all a scam. But by doing that, we really keep the marketplace clear to sort of leave it open for, um, innovation to happen.

00:43:03 --> 00:43:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think I agree with Paddy in terms of fraud and scam. Fraud is fraud, you know? What I think AI does is it has changed the nature of fraud. That's something which we have seen, you know, in terms of just… instead of just keeping it as a small-scale, you know, industry, it has completely changed it to…

00:43:22 --> 00:43:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: make it more sophisticated, you know, more organized, and also sort of make it more personalized and probably, you know.

00:43:32 --> 00:43:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Very, very, very focused, I think, scam, which sort of makes it difficult for law enforcement in terms of addressing it. So AI is a technology. AI is a tool which has completely changed the nature of fraud, which we are seeing, I think, three or four years ago.

00:43:48 --> 00:44:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Which is a challenge. But on the flip side, I'm also seeing a lot of examples where law enforcement and supervisors are also using AI to address some of those, you know, issues which are coming up. I was in a G20 deputies meeting, and there's a lot of buzz around India's initiative on mule hunters. They developed a technology.

00:44:06 --> 00:44:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to identify mules across. And this is a technology developed by Central Bank Innovation Hub itself. So they rolled out the product. They sort of, you know, advise banks to install this product. And within a matter of few months, every month now, they are sort of identifying 20,000 odd mules.

00:44:23 --> 00:44:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: by just looking at the transaction data and behavioral pattern across 30 banks. And we are talking about thousands of banks in India, which still have the potential to implement the solution and figure out what exactly is happening. So why AI has completely changed the nature of the fraud, which I completely understand.

00:44:40 --> 00:44:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: it has also given tools to law enforcement to get better in terms of addressing some of those challenges. For me, I think the interesting one is where, um, an agent executes a fraud independent of being instructed to do so.

00:44:52 --> 00:45:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And I think, how does… what are the regulatory implications around that? But maybe that's a criminal justice question rather than a regulatory question. Um…

00:45:00 --> 00:45:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I won't linger on that. So getting towards the end of our discussion, I'd be really interested to get a sense of how regulators should approach the questions around fraud being fundamentally transnational, cross-sectoral, cross-border.

00:45:16 --> 00:45:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: kind of… there are obvious… a lot of companies operate in a situation where they have to comply with multiple jurisdictions across multiple spaces. Um, I begin to go to Laureen in the first instance, and then off to Ashish as well.

00:45:30 --> 00:45:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, the usual disclaimer, my views are my own, they don't represent the Commission or the Commissioners, now that I've gotten that out of the way, we do all know that fraud does not respect borders, um, it, uh, can act, uh.

00:45:45 --> 00:46:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: with bad guys and gals in one jurisdiction targeting another jurisdiction, the evidence is in a third jurisdiction, and the money can go all over. So it's really important, even if there are regulatory differences in our approaches.

00:46:00 --> 00:46:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And there are, of course, there's even differences in the United States between the federal and the state approaches. So we have all these different approaches, but there is typically some common ground and common interests. We are all interested in protecting our citizens from getting ripped off, and therefore I think it is.

00:46:21 --> 00:46:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: crucially important for, um, consumer protection and law enforcement folks to work together, to share information where they can, and to collaborate and, um, engage in joint or serial enforcement actions also when they can.

00:46:41 --> 00:46:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: At the FTC, we actually have specialized statutory tools to do just that. We can share information about our cases with our counterparts, especially if we think it will help them take care of a problem in their backyard.

00:46:56 --> 00:47:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We can also provide investigative assistance where if a foreign country needs evidence that is in the United States and the entity they are seeking that evidence basically is telling them to pound sand.

00:47:12 --> 00:47:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: If it's a false or deceptive practice that we can pursue, we can actually obtain that information on their behalf and share it with them. So we have these specialized tools that really create incentives to go after fraudsters.

00:47:28 --> 00:47:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: even if things are happening outside and across borders. And I think in today's world, that's crucial to pursue.

00:47:36 --> 00:47:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think it's entirely fair. I mean, I'm kind of just wondering, how does a company who has to operate across conflicting jurisdictional borders, um, where two different regulations require different things of them, I mean, I do think that kind of creates.

00:47:52 --> 00:47:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Inefficiencies in our operation, no?

00:47:55 --> 00:48:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Maybe Ashish, you're confused? For sure it does. I mean, this is something which not only in cross-border context, but also in national context, we hear quite a bit. Data protection is one example, where if you have like 10 lawyers in a room and you ask their opinions, they will probably give you 11 opinions.

00:48:10 --> 00:48:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And that's a challenge, not just in national context, but international context for sure. And that's something which we are looking at more closely in terms of our standards or our guidance in terms of how we can nudge national authorities and probably other.

00:48:26 --> 00:48:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: authorities as well to get better in terms of writing guidance, for example. We have seen some successful stories where data production authorities, national authorities, supervisors have got together, sit in a room and identified what is possible, what not, and what is not possible.

00:48:41 --> 00:48:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: wrote some good FAQs and probably provided more incentive and more sort of clarity to industry what we can do. And I think there's some expectation from the industry as well here, because a lot of time I don't know if it is a real problem or it's a perceived problem that you want to take a more…

00:48:58 --> 00:49:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: defensive approach in some of those issues where you think that it is not allowed by, in many jurisdictions, you know, the law allows you to share information for prevention of financial crimes or for, you know, fighting fraud. So that's a call which industry also needs to take, that, okay, are they trying to be really helpful, or is it something.

00:49:15 --> 00:49:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You are shielding behind, you know, a lawyer's opinion and probably not being as proactive as you should be in terms of your own responsibility.

00:49:23 --> 00:49:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you. And I want to say you heard it here first, that data sharing is actually doable, but it's always great to hear a regulator say that. So we're just coming up to the final question, which is going to quickfire around, and after that, we'll go with a roving mic to the audience. So please do get your questions ready.

00:49:38 --> 00:49:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But, um, the quick, quick fire, um, what are you, what's the one thing you're not getting from industry right now? What do you want to see?

00:49:47 --> 00:49:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think a genuine feedback loop. So, when we're trying to feed the system, and let's just call it the system.

00:49:55 --> 00:50:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Is it useful? Is it meaningful? How's it being acted upon? How could it be enhanced? How could it be improved? And then also that feedback loop back down the other way, you know, what are the typologies that the system is seeing that we as the regulator need to be alert to? It needs to, it just needs to, it just needs to be a full circle.

00:50:12 --> 00:50:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And it goes to the point that Ashish just said there around, we can't hide behind, um, the inability to share data. Um, it's, it's quite clear to me. You can share data for the prevention of fraud, and we should all be doing it.

00:50:27 --> 00:50:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I'm gonna cheat and say two things, in part because one I've already mentioned. Again, I'm just gonna put a plug. If your company does not maintain confidentiality when you get a subpoena from us, please revisit your policies. But more importantly, one thing that we really don't get a lot… we do get some from industry, but we don't get as much as we are hoping for.

00:50:46 --> 00:51:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Our consumer reports. So a lot of times consumer reports, it's the bread and butter of how we do our law enforcement. It's the basis of how we, you know, we analyze our consumer reports and we identify our law enforcement priorities. We identify our consumer education priorities and our even our collaboration priorities. And we know that underreporting is a huge issue from consumers.

00:51:06 --> 00:51:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think there was actually a recent Gallup survey that indicated that consumers are actually more likely to report the fraud to the banks and to the payment methods than they are to law enforcement. And that makes total sense. It's actually part of our bread and butter consumer education outreach sort of messaging. We tell consumers to report it to the payment method as soon as possible.

00:51:26 --> 00:51:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: in part because they want to try to get their money back, but then that next step is missing, right? Getting it to the government regulators who can actually do something about it. And in Sentinel, we actually do partner with a ton of private sector to get consumer reports to us.

00:51:42 --> 00:51:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So you can be a data referrer, you can be a data collector. There are a lot of different ways to partner with us. And I think we have about over 150 data contributors, maybe a little bit more than that, all from different government agencies, from private sector, from all walks of life.

00:51:58 --> 00:52:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I would highly encourage you to take a look at that and think about it if you're interested.

00:52:05 --> 00:52:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Very briefly, actionable intelligence. I think that's something which we need from the regulator's perspective, from the law enforcement perspective. There's a lot of compliance reporting, which makes sense. I mean, you have an obligation to report. That's why you do. But you have to really introspect, is it really going to work for law enforcement?

00:52:22 --> 00:52:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Which is adding value in terms of evidence base. You might not have the full picture, you might not have uncovered the whole scam or whole fraud, but are you sharing something which is useful for law enforcement, which will aid in their work? They have other tools to go back to other financial institutions as well.

00:52:38 --> 00:52:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: are sharing something which is actionable in terms of, you know, their activities, probably that's going to do the trick.

00:52:44 --> 00:52:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Fantastic, thank you so much. Um, and with that, over to you guys. Um, please stick your hand up if you want to ask a question. Uh, there's one in the back, over there.

00:52:54 --> 00:52:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Start with that.

00:52:59 --> 00:53:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Hi, I'm Chuck Bell from Consumer Reports in the U.S.

00:53:04 --> 00:53:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, from the perspective of preventing payment fraud, we believe it's really important that every payment method have protections for consumer redress and reimbursement, similar to what you've put in place in the UK with the APP rule.

00:53:19 --> 00:53:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: In the US, a lot of consumers who are scammed do not receive reimbursements. And our banks don't have the same skin in the game as your receiving and sending bank, that because they share in the losses, they face an incentive to internalize the costs and mitigate the risks.

00:53:37 --> 00:53:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And so in the US, only the credit card is the one that has chargeback rights and refunds if the seller does not ship the goods or the goods are damaged and so on. So we need robust payment protections for every type of payment, especially digital payments. And so that's my question for the panel.

00:53:53 --> 00:54:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, can we make more progress on that? Because that gets the incentives right, and it gets the companies who have the resources to invest in those systems to put them in place. Thank you. Um, any other questions before… may I take them in a… in a group?

00:54:07 --> 00:54:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We've got a couple, one lady over there and one lady closer to the front.

00:54:13 --> 00:54:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Please do wait for the mic, because otherwise nobody can hear you.

00:54:18 --> 00:54:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Umm.

00:54:23 --> 00:54:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I forgot about that. Hi, my name is Kiki. I am a CEO of a stealth startup that's been operationalized for the last nine months. And we have been intersecting with the public layer. And I really wanted to understand.

00:54:39 --> 00:54:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: How you all envision reporting and track tracking internal fraud, uh, especially with the public layer and how that is, um, developing the heuristics for.

00:54:55 --> 00:55:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, you know, public-private, uh, partnerships, um, because…

00:55:00 --> 00:55:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, from the US perspective, I see a big gaping hole as far as how we track, um, internal fraud and money movements from, you know, uh.

00:55:12 --> 00:55:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: municipal or civic layer, and it's something I haven't heard come up a lot in the conversations recently. Thank you, and just one further question to the lady here in the front.

00:55:29 --> 00:55:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Over there. Sorry, behind you.

00:55:33 --> 00:55:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: My name's Debbie Fox, and I'm a victim of fraud, and I have been following policy, um, with a little bit of disheartened…

00:55:43 --> 00:55:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: at the pace, and I'm wondering if, on behalf of the FTC, if you're able to respond to, are there any proposed.

00:55:51 --> 00:56:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: policies in D.C. right now that you would like to have passed that, in my advocacy voice and those of others, that we could try to promote?

00:56:00 --> 00:56:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, thank you very much for all of those. Um, I think there's probably a couple questions for Patty. I think there's a, uh, there's one on, um, on liability and one on, uh, DC, and I think, um, Ashish or Lucy, you might want to talk about internal fraud, no?

00:56:15 --> 00:56:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: No views on internal fraud from Ashish. In that case, Lucy, you can do it. You can do internal fraud. Great. Fantastic. Patty.

00:56:22 --> 00:56:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, okay, so the question about the payments, um, and liability, um, I think that is something that we have tracked very closely, um, and I think, realistically speaking, in the U.S, it…

00:56:33 --> 00:56:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: it's based on regulatory frameworks. All the different payment methods have a different regulatory framework, depending on even just the rail that's being used, which is kind of mind-boggling to me. Um, it could be from the same institution, but if you're, you know, sending an ACH payment versus a wire transfer.

00:56:49 --> 00:57:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: different. So, realistically speaking, I think it's very hard for regulators to do a lot about it, because it is set up at the congressional level, um, and that is, you know, going to Debbie's question, um, I don't know of any.

00:57:04 --> 00:57:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: current policies that are pending right now, or proposals that are pending right now, that, um, I can think of off the top of my head that really would have legs, um, or that would…

00:57:15 --> 00:57:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that I can think of off the top of my head that would be really useful, but the payment stuff is something… or the… looking at the regulatory framework for payments is something that I think really does need some work on, and I don't have a solution for it, but it is something I think that could be useful.

00:57:34 --> 00:57:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Maybe not directly answer your question, but when we talk about cross-border payments, there's a lot of emphasis that payment has to be faster, it has to be cheaper, it has to be more accessible, it has to be more transparent. But nobody talks about, or at least there's less emphasis on that payment also has to be.

00:57:49 --> 00:58:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, more safe and more secured. And that's a policy sort of objective which we should all look at, rather than just making payment faster, cheaper, more accessible, and more transparent. And this is where the role of frictions come into place, that probably some of the frictions are absolutely necessary to prevent.

00:58:04 --> 00:58:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: all those frauds and all those scams which you are looking at right now. Because as far as our standards are concerned, we look at our revised standards. Some of you might not be FATF null, but when we talk about standards, we talk about recommendation 16, for example, on cross-border payments.

00:58:21 --> 00:58:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: it has introduced some frictions in terms of, you know, uh, you know, uh, standardized, for example, the data fields in terms of how much information should flow along with those cross-border payments, you know, beneficiary information, uh, information about originator. Also, the requirements to carry out alignment checks so that the payment really goes to the person for whom.

00:58:39 --> 00:58:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you intended to do. All those are, to some extent, frictions in the payment mechanism, but probably necessary ones. And that's where we look at that you need to, when you are drafting a policy, you have to keep a balance on not just one policy objective, but different policy objectives. And I can tell you, this is not an easy job. This really takes its toll.

00:58:57 --> 00:59:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: In terms of, you know, framing those frameworks. In 2014, the UK brought into place the faster payment system, which was one of the first, if not the first, in the world of its kind, where payments would go within a fraction of a second. And that is when the UK's fraud and epidemic started, and that's where everything else follows, at least in the UK's history.

00:59:18 --> 00:59:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I was just gonna build a little bit on what she said in terms of looking at the future. So one of the things we're contemplating in the UK.

00:59:26 --> 00:59:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: is, um, to the fri- exactly to the friction point, uh, and a little bit to incentives. Is there a way of almost providing, uh, and creating a safe list?

00:59:37 --> 00:59:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, you know, you've got really reduced frictions when a payment is made to someone on that safe list. Big question as to how you produce that, right? But let's just park that for the moment. But at least we're having the discussion about it. Then what that should enable the payment institutions and the banks to do.

00:59:52 --> 01:00:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It's to really look at the frictions and slow down those payments for those payments that are going to firms, individuals that are not on the safe list. And again, it just it means that you've got the frictions in the right place. And that's certainly something that we're.

01:00:09 --> 01:00:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: we're… I mean, it's early doors, but we're certainly having those conversations in the UK right now.

01:00:13 --> 01:00:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I would genuinely ask whether payment does need to have… does need to come through in, you know.001 of a second, or it can be, like, you know, 5 seconds, or 10 seconds, or 5 minutes.

01:00:23 --> 01:00:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It's a really good question, but again, I think that's where, you know, everyone… I haven't got my phone up here, but if I did, I'd be saying everyone wants everything at their fingertips, which isn't a piece of paper, by the way, that's meant to be a tech… piece of technology. Um…

01:00:35 --> 01:00:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, so again, how do we get that message out there to consumers that actually it might be okay if something takes a minute to go through? Um, and that's where you've got to look at the consumer education, you've got to look at the consumer comms, um, because without that, unfortunately, you're going to get complaints the other way.

01:00:51 --> 01:00:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, but people need to be, um, accepting of the fact that there will be frictions for good reason.

01:00:56 --> 01:00:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, particular moments in time.

01:00:58 --> 01:01:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you. Um, uh, we've got a couple more questions, uh, in the audience. Uh, should we start with the lady with the mic?

01:01:03 --> 01:01:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Hi, my name is Catherine Guerra, I'm from the Royal Bank of Canada, and I have a question for Lucy. So, understanding, um, I guess the new liability framework that's in place in the UK.

01:01:14 --> 01:01:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, that incentivizes the sending and receiving FIs to put in more controls to protect clients.

01:01:20 --> 01:01:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: How do you… but looking at the, I guess, the broader scam ecosystem, you know, we've talked about the role that telcos have, that social media platforms have, so in the UK, how do you incentivize those other players who are not necessarily being held financially liable for these losses?

01:01:39 --> 01:01:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Nice, easy one there. Can we take another question before we give Lucy a little bit more time to think? There's a gentleman over there on the other side of the room.

01:01:50 --> 01:01:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Can you pass the microphone down, please?

01:01:57 --> 01:02:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, thanks a lot. Ben Aldersey from the IMF. Um, I was gonna ask exactly the same question to some extent. I think it's a really, really, um, interesting question, but maybe I can add a little bit to the end of that, um, because we're talking about.

01:02:11 --> 01:02:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: regulator scorecards, so we're thinking internationally to some extent as well. Just on the back of that, Lucy, do you have any sort of takeaways, if you like, of what change… I know you said the figures about the reduction in scams and the payments and so on that you've seen.

01:02:28 --> 01:02:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But are there any other sort of lessons or thoughts around this policy that you rolled out? And in particular, for example, I'm thinking, has this sort of, or have you seen any changes in consumer behavior, for example, knowing that they get this back? And also.

01:02:43 --> 01:02:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: what's the kind of reaction of the industry? Because I imagine a lot of them were like, we're putting lots of money up front to tackle fraud through things like we discussed before, so AI, all of that kind of stuff, but then they're also…

01:02:58 --> 01:03:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: responsible for the… basically for the fraud once it's happened, and paying for that. So I just wondered if you had any observations to add to that question in relation to that.

01:03:11 --> 01:03:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thanks for that Ben.

01:03:13 --> 01:03:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I used to work with Ben, so I can get away with saying that.

01:03:18 --> 01:03:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Look, I have absolutely no doubt that the APP reimbursement scheme, it hurts our banks, right? It hurts our banks because they are the ones that are shouldering 50-50 with the sending and receiving institution.

01:03:36 --> 01:03:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, there is something in that concept that tells me some form of financial hit is probably an incentive to get fraud detection and fraud prevention correct. Where you insert that in the system, I think, is a very interesting question.

01:03:51 --> 01:04:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, uh, and, you know, there are definitely calls, uh, across the globe for social media companies to be held more to account. Um, but I think one of the really difficult parts with that, and certainly from, um, I'd love to be in your position where you don't get so many calls from consumers.

01:04:07 --> 01:04:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I get about 50,000 a year, which may not sound very many, but that's pretty punchy. But what those incoming calls tell us is they will turn around and say, yeah, I saw something on social media. What it doesn't necessarily tell us is.

01:04:22 --> 01:04:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: what social media. So actually, you know, there's a big challenge and a big debate that we need to work through there, if social media companies are to be held, um, financially, uh, to account. So I think that there's definitely something in that as a concept, but how you enact that in practice.

01:04:37 --> 01:04:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: um, I, I, I think is more, um, interesting. And, Ben, to your point, I think, um, a couple of the really interesting, and I'll just sort of anecdotes, which I'll throw in, because I, I know that we're butting up against time now, but…

01:04:50 --> 01:05:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: From a UK consumers perspective you know we've had big pushes on don't answer the phone calls you know my parents now know to just put the phone down when they get those so it's a bit of a statement of the obvious but if you say something once say something twice say something three four five six seven eight nine times.

01:05:11 --> 01:05:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We know that the message does get through, and I think as an industry, and I use that in the broadest sense, there's probably two or three key messages that we need to get behind to drum this point home. It's not gonna happen overnight, and, you know, for me, scams and fraud is a bit like a balloon. You squeeze in one area, it'll pop up elsewhere.

01:05:27 --> 01:05:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But we know that from a… broadly, from a telco perspective, people do know to put the phone down. They know that they're not going to receive an incoming call in the UK from their bank. They know to put it down, probably leave it off the hook, or on the hook for 2 minutes, so that the scammer at the other end.

01:05:44 --> 01:06:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: disappears. So as I say two or three key messages that we probably need to coalesce around and one of the things that we are very much looking at is what is the regulator's role in financial education but I think also more importantly financial inclusion as well.

01:06:01 --> 01:06:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, both with a slightly different lens, and I'd hope that we can deliver some of the messages, uh, through that work, uh, in the coming years ahead. Can I add just one point to that? So, um, I worked very closely on the UK's national Stopping Fraud campaign. I think…

01:06:16 --> 01:06:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What we need more than anything else is the public to start thinking about the fact that they're going to get targeted on a regular basis, and to get them to deploy protective behaviors across the piece, because trying to get them to remember one or two things is likely going to miss the point, because.

01:06:31 --> 01:06:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: fraudsters are so easy to… are so quick to adapt and to… to change, and they will quote those very slogans back at you, um, or back at the victims, and as a way of building and creating a sort of trust. You know, they frequently masquerade as counter-fraud departments, right? That's a common… common, um…

01:06:46 --> 01:06:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: line for them to take. So, the… I think it's more… it's more, kind of… it's slightly more challenging, but…

01:06:53 --> 01:07:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: probably ultimately more effective if we get them… if we get consumers to start thinking about those interactions and start challenging what they are seeing in front of them, um, as well as just a few, kind of, key things as well.

01:07:06 --> 01:07:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um… Patty?

01:07:08 --> 01:07:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Sorry.

01:07:10 --> 01:07:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I just wanted to add to that about the consumer behavior, um, because one thing we actually really do see in a lot of our consumer reports, and I don't mean to say that we don't get consumer reports, we get, like, 7,000 a day, um, so we have millions of reports, but, um, one thing that we do see a lot in the consumer reports is that consumers.

01:07:26 --> 01:07:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It's interesting, the consumer awareness campaigns are working. Consumers are trying to verify whether or not they're actually interacting with a scammer. They're just really terrible at it. They're really bad at trying to verify, right? They'll do the thing that they think they're doing to verify, but then it turns out they're just kind of interacting with a scammer.

01:07:42 --> 01:07:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And I think that is the missing piece that we kind of need to figure out how to break through, um, is how do we provide them with tools to verify? I mean, I'm obliged to perch, um, scam.org is a, a website where consumers can go and ask a chatbot who can help them understand and educate themselves, but also to help them.

01:07:59 --> 01:08:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: check particular things or websites or telephone numbers against scams. Um, uh, but other, other solutions also exist. Um, uh, one, we've got time for one final question. Uh, we've got this gentleman here halfway through. On the other side, I'm terribly sorry.

01:08:14 --> 01:08:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And you know what, I might just run the mic across myself.

01:08:20 --> 01:08:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Point.

01:08:25 --> 01:08:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you, honorary panelists. Um, I'm Andre Leung, co-founder and CEO of Arif, uh, AI RegTech company. Uh, my company have been selected with the UKFCAD AI Live Cohort 2.

01:08:38 --> 01:08:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, testing alongside UBS Barclays, uh, Lloyd's. So, right now, I'm actually, um, building my synthetic data for the AI live testing, um, with the UK regulator. And now my question is, um.

01:08:52 --> 01:09:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: from the, um, policy point of view, um, I know a lot of scam detection more directly tied to the social media sniffing, so at a bank perspective, you know, how can… what is the recommendation? Um, banks can actually have some early indicator of this.

01:09:10 --> 01:09:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Investment and romance scam detection, because, um…

01:09:14 --> 01:09:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We found that the privacy of data will be difficult for the actual bank customer to disclose to the bank to do the early detection. So how do we mitigate this?

01:09:27 --> 01:09:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I'm not quite sure, so can you just repeat the question itself? So the question is about the, I think the scam detection is more directly relevant to the conversation, right, with the scammer, but which the bank customer will be reluctant to submit to the bank.

01:09:43 --> 01:10:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, but this is the most important piece of information for early detection. So usually it comes on the transaction level is related to crypto wallet or transaction hash, but it may not be the case in the early, like, you know, the early phase of these scam activities.

01:10:00 --> 01:10:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So…

01:10:01 --> 01:10:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You know, is there anything that, you know, policymaker would recommend the banks, you know, to do a better early detection?

01:10:10 --> 01:10:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Early detection.

01:10:12 --> 01:10:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Can you take this? It's a difficult one, I think.

01:10:16 --> 01:10:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think in many countries, for example, India is one example. Again, I'm leaning back on India, but there was a huge, and there's still a huge sort of problem of digital arrest. Probably not many of you would have seen what digital arrest means. It means that the person impersonates as law enforcement officer, calls the.

01:10:34 --> 01:10:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Sort of, you know, the victim, and says that you have done something wrong, and in fact, the person is under house arrest for 2, 3, 4 days, and then, you know, he cannot get out, or she cannot go out of the room, you know, it's like constant pressure that you need to transfer money in 3 or 4 days, and by the time the person is out, he's already broken.

01:10:51 --> 01:11:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And when banks ask them, you know, what's the purpose of this transfer, they don't get the right answer sometimes. But we have some very good success stories where the bank officer or bank managers really gets to know, you know, what exactly is the transaction pattern of this person, why this behavioral pattern is not in line with.

01:11:08 --> 01:11:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: understanding the customer's behavior in the past, and why this is a scam. And there have been some very good success stories by, sort of, you know, by those bankers, you know, going beyond their normal, uh, expectation of business, and preventing those kind of frauds. So I think it's a question of, you know, not just doing a pay-per-customer.

01:11:25 --> 01:11:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, KYC, but also knowing the behavior of the customer, past behavior of the customer, and knowing your customers through customer due diligence measures rather than KYC, because there's a huge world of disconnect between KYC and CDD, which you need to really think about.

01:11:37 --> 01:11:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, very difficult to disagree with any of that. I'm afraid we have run out of time, so I would like to say massive thanks to our panel.

01:11:51 --> 01:12:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I would start with asking everybody to put on their headphones.

01:12:00 --> 01:12:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So why don't we get.

01:12:01 --> 01:12:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Because you're going to be.

01:12:03 --> 01:12:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We'll have Andre, Lucy, Scott. Yeah, if you just stay on the stage and then… Yeah, I will be calling people up in the second group. Yes, indeed. That's what they're asking. Yeah. I just need to be able to see that. Yeah, okay.

01:12:20 --> 01:12:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So.

01:12:21 --> 01:12:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Scott, why don't you sit between… You sit here. Look.

01:12:28 --> 01:12:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And you should have it.

01:12:30 --> 01:12:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not sure.

01:12:39 --> 01:12:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Hello.

01:12:41 --> 01:12:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It's, uh, it's, uh.

01:12:43 --> 01:12:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Got it.

01:12:45 --> 01:12:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It's San Francisco, which means that — Yeah, San Francisco is not over yet. OK.

01:12:52 --> 01:13:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It's a global announcement, just in case people switch their headphones onto red or blue, it should be on green. Okay.

01:13:00 --> 01:13:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Okay, we are the green room. Can you hear me? Just some sort of sign, because I can barely hear myself. Okay. Your earphones should be green. If they're a different color, then you'll be picking up. So there's a gentleman in the back with blue. You'll be picking up a different room's audio.

01:13:21 --> 01:13:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Okay.

01:13:26 --> 01:13:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The green, the green…

01:13:28 --> 01:13:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We are the green room.

01:13:30 --> 01:13:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And the greens.

01:13:34 --> 01:13:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Oh, right there.

01:13:43 --> 01:13:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Okay, you can now hear me. So, just double check, if you… if you can't hear me in your earphones.

01:13:53 --> 01:14:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And your earphones are a different color, so there's a couple of people I can see with blue earphones. Get it to switch to the color green, and you will be able to hear.

01:14:04 --> 01:14:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Okay. Green. So if you see somebody near you who hasn't got a green color on their headphones, help them out.

01:14:13 --> 01:14:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Ok.

01:14:19 --> 01:14:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Okay, so you can also adjust the volume in your headphones if it's deafening. So thank you very much for attending today. You are in the workshop Scam Geographies, where we will be looking at four key questions.

01:14:36 --> 01:14:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Where are the victims?

01:14:39 --> 01:14:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Where are the scammers? Where is the kit that the scammers are using? And then finally we will have a consideration of well, so what do we do about it? So I'm joined today. We're going to have.

01:14:54 --> 01:15:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: three different changes of speakers to delight you all today, and I'm so grateful to all of our speakers for coming and joining us today, sharing their deep knowledge and expertise. This first segment, which is primarily informational, um, in nature.

01:15:10 --> 01:15:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: is going to consider the questions of where are the scammers. So, um, I just don't even know if this works, the clicker. Okay, so…

01:15:22 --> 01:15:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: First of all, I would like to, um, invite our very good friend Andrei Skorobotov, who is the Director of Policy at Gaza, and known, of course, to many of you, to just give us a very brief overview in, you know, 2 or 3 minutes.

01:15:37 --> 01:16:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: About where you in your extensive research are finding the victims are and what are the trends that you're seeing? Thank you. Thanks, Emily, and thank you very much for having me on this panel. I mean, the honest answer is they're everywhere. It could be it's all people of all from all walks of life, in all countries, in all cities.

01:16:00 --> 01:16:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, and all situations are affected by the threat of fraud and scams. There is lots of evidence, I mean, we are not… we can plug my… our own, um, GASA research, but we can also plug, um, research done by, uh, by the, kind of, a recent Gallup publication, courtesy of, um.

01:16:16 --> 01:16:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: of the Stop Scams Alliance US, there's the Crime Survey of England and Wales, um, Crime Survey of England and Wales, and a range of other publications. We all know… the answer is that everybody can be a victim. In fact, um, the evidence suggests that although.

01:16:31 --> 01:16:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: many misconceptions exist that it's older people are affected. In fact, younger people are more likely to become victims of fraud and scams than necessarily older people. Um, we know that, um, we also think, we tend to think that, uh, uh, people in developed countries are more likely to become victims. That's, again, not true.

01:16:48 --> 01:17:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: we know that people in developing countries are more likely to experience fraud and scams, and are more likely to experience a greater loss as a percentage of their average income than people in developed countries. Partly, I mean, we can make guesses about why that would be, and maybe they have greater protections.

01:17:06 --> 01:17:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: um, et cetera, but we know the victims are everywhere, um, anybody can happen. I'm sure we all know, uh, we all have either been a victim, or we know somebody who has been a victim. I'm, I'm, I'm fairly confident that applies to everyone in this room. Um, and, and the sophistication of modern fraud and scams is so high.

01:17:26 --> 01:17:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That the average individual going about the daily business online or elsewhere, um, is unlikely to be able to effectively detect a scam attempt, and they continue to grow in sophistication, and our response, sadly, all too often lacks.

01:17:43 --> 01:18:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you very much, and thank you for such a concise opening. So if I can summarize, Andre, you would be saying, where are the victims? They're everywhere, across all countries, across all social strata. Sorry, can I just add one more thing which I remembered?

01:18:00 --> 01:18:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, the interesting thing to talk about is in terms of the harm. I think there is a differentiation in terms of the harm that people experience. Whilst everybody can be a victim of scams, um, the most vulnerable demographics are more likely to experience greater harm, and greater lasting harm.

01:18:16 --> 01:18:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that will impact their confidence in society, their confidence in the financial system or digital commerce system, and that's why they might be oftentimes less likely to, like, older people are less likely to experience a scam, they're more likely to experience greater harm as a result of it. So I think we need to.

01:18:33 --> 01:18:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: differentiate between vulnerability to fraud and vulnerability from fraud. Yeah, thank you very much. Now I'm going to pass the floor to Lucien Taylor, who is the CTO of Oxford Information Labs and a co-founder of the Global Signal Exchange.

01:18:49 --> 01:19:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Lucien, the team, uh, the research team has been doing a lot of analysis of, uh, the signals, 1.4 billion signals, um, overall in the Global Signal Exchange. We've been looking at a subset of that, which you'll take us to.

01:19:04 --> 01:19:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So whereas Andre is talking about the evidence gleaned from victims themselves through survey data and other type of sources, we're taking the telescope and looking through the other end here at what do the signals tell us about the geographical targeting of victims. Lucien.

01:19:25 --> 01:19:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The floor is yours. Thank you very much, Emily, and thank you, Andre. Um, I think Gaza's doing a fantastic series looking at different geographies. We heard that there was a preview, I don't think it was out last week when we were in Japan, about the Japan, uh.

01:19:40 --> 01:19:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: fraud, uh, uh, review, which was, uh, fascinating. I can't wait to actually read it. Um, so what we've been doing is taking salami slices through the data and looking at it through a different lens. Today, we are focusing on geographies and regions, and what we're really interested in.

01:19:58 --> 01:20:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Is thinking about the scammer, and which regions are they targeting, and what are they, you know, what are they actually saying when they choose and purchase, particularly domain names, which is that hook that gets the victim.

01:20:13 --> 01:20:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: into the scam journey. We looked at, within our 1.4 billion signals, we looked at nearly 8 million unique URL signals from the first six months of this year. Our large language model analysis.

01:20:29 --> 01:20:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: looking at geographic entities. Um, we've developed our own deterministic scoring between 1 and 6, uh, 6 being very strong geographical regional signals. What do I mean by that? Well, uh, a geographic entity is a direct reference to a specific place.

01:20:47 --> 01:21:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: proper name, term, or brand deeply woven into a local daily life. So it could be a local brand here, CVS or Walgreens, Banks, Wells Fargo, and so on. And what we were looking at is, if you look at California, we can see a word map there of the.

01:21:06 --> 01:21:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: of the signals, where the LLM is basically saying, this is really talking to the people of California, so the scammer, when they're building their scam machine, is talking the language of Californians. They're trying to reassure.

01:21:22 --> 01:21:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and attract Californians. Likewise, we can broaden that out, so we're dipping into place names that are familiar in this area, local sports teams, government authorities, education, and many more.

01:21:34 --> 01:21:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Likewise, lifting the helicopter higher, we can target the USA. What we found was, overall, the US is the second most targeted before China.

01:21:49 --> 01:22:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, followed by Japan and Brazil. Um, and it is the most targeted when we increase to high relevance scores of a 3 or more in those signals. So, this is telling us that the scammers are targeting.

01:22:05 --> 01:22:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the US, predominantly China, United Kingdom, and Brazil. So we'll just leave that hanging in the air, because we've got more coming later. Thank you. Thank you very much, Lucy, and we'll come back to you later when we talk about the kit that scammers are using, and the geography of that.

01:22:21 --> 01:22:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But first of all, I would like to pass the floor to Scott Swantner, who's the Global Director of Law Enforcement Outreach at Meta. Scott, Meta has been doing and has published some research mapping the location of scam centers.

01:22:39 --> 01:22:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: particularly in Southeast Asia. I would really be grateful to you to just give us a couple of minutes on your work there, and what you were seeing about the geography of where are the scammers.

01:22:54 --> 01:22:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Sure, happy to. Can everyone hear me okay?

01:22:56 --> 01:23:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Great. So the map is exactly that. It's kind of a depiction of where we're seeing from a meta standpoint, the scammers located. It's not a complete map because it has a heavy bias towards our holdings and what we're doing.

01:23:13 --> 01:23:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: as a social media company. but it's if you combine it with the other private industry partners and then work that we do of law enforcement, the map becomes much more complete. And specifically, there's kind of three large areas in Southeast Asia that, we've seen bad actors and scam centers pop up over the last 18 to 25 months and continue to grow.

01:23:33 --> 01:23:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, those are obviously, um, surrounding, for folks that are familiar with the archetype in that region, surrounding Thailand, um, and Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, Burma.

01:23:45 --> 01:23:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And, you know, there's, there's cities like Osmak, there's, uh, there's scam compounds like K99, um, Taichung. These are…

01:23:55 --> 01:24:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: elegant and refined casino areas and built-up infrastructure. If you were to go to them and look at them, it would…

01:24:04 --> 01:24:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Raise your hand if you've been to Las Vegas or Reno. It would literally, it would rival, probably not Las Vegas, but definitely the size of Reno, some of these areas. But with inside those buildings, there's organized scam that's happening.

01:24:20 --> 01:24:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: All of this is, uh, kind of put together not only through our research, but now public indictments that, uh, many law enforcement entities, but I would specifically call out the Scam Center Strike Force by the USDOJ, as well as the Royal Type Police that have been our really, really strong partners in the region.

01:24:38 --> 01:24:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: have now announced indictments, seizures, sanctions against entities and organizations connected with those areas. So, once that is now a matter of kind of public record, we're able to take the information that they have, put it in our holdings and find out.

01:24:54 --> 01:25:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: uh, where else these… these scam centers are popping up. And one of the saddest parts is it's… it's… they're very resilient. So, for… for example, Synahokville, um, is kind of a scam center hotbed, and we can literally see at times when…

01:25:10 --> 01:25:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: we're able to interdict a specific scam center, it, you know, a very similar infrastructure will pop up, sometimes even in a different part of Sand Hookville, or in a very close region. And you can also see this when you're researching the publicly available geographical mapping sites, where you look just over the border.

01:25:26 --> 01:25:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: from Thailand, and you see an open field, and you look at it at 18 months later, and there's a pretty large casino park that's built up, and that's a scam center. So, I'll talk a little bit more when we have time about some of the work that we're doing to interdict this, but it's a massive problem, and I think our holdings are allowing us to interdict at scale.

01:25:45 --> 01:26:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But as I said on the first point, it's definitely a combination of the signal that's going to be the most effective from our our industry as well as financial industry, as well as entities like GASA and GSE to make sure that we're getting the full picture so we can know where the next hot heat map is for scammers.

01:26:02 --> 01:26:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, so you're giving us a picture of immense dynamism, speed and scale in particular geographic regions, but this is an ever-changing landscape. Did you just want to say a couple of words on what you're doing to interdict it?

01:26:19 --> 01:26:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Sure, so, um…

01:26:21 --> 01:26:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: One of the models that we found has worked the best in the last 18 months or so are what we call joint disruption weeks. So these are dedicated weeks, they're sprints with Meta, other private industry companies, and law enforcement, where we actually, we set up pre-work.

01:26:40 --> 01:26:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We get together either for a week or two weeks, to execute on, signals that we're getting, and then quickly be able to pass through the proper legal channels to the government so they can actually go out and make arrests, make seizures, save victims.

01:26:55 --> 01:27:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Do all three. So far we've done we did one in December of 25. That was kind of the first one in Bangkok at the Anti-Scam Center with the Royal Type Police. We followed up quickly in March with another one at the Anti-Scam Center with the Royal Type Police. We just did the first one in the United States back in May and June, that the DOJ and I know Judge Perot is going to talk about this later today.

01:27:17 --> 01:27:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The DOJ, Scam Center Strike Force led, that we help participate in along with other private industry companies and not just U.S. law enforcement. There's there's, like I said, roadside police. There's the NCAA from the UK is a very, very strong partner for us, as well as other five eye law enforcement entities.

01:27:34 --> 01:27:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, as well as other law enforcement entities that are interested in this, and we're getting ready to do another one here in a few months. So this is a, I would say, a successful model, but definitely something that needs to scale even more, um, so we can have real and effectual change. Yeah, thank you very much.

01:27:50 --> 01:28:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You've kind of given us a segue and a sneak peek onto our third segment where we will have other people also reflecting on what do we do about this distributed geography? How do we think differently about partners? But I'm very grateful to you for sharing those insights.

01:28:06 --> 01:28:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And you mentioned the scam compounds. We have just a brief testimony from a scam compound survivor, Abdus Salam, who is human trafficked into a scam compound in Southeast Asia.

01:28:21 --> 01:28:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And he's giving us a little bit of a sense of the different geographies that they were targeting from that single base. I'm not sure if we can play the video. There is sound. It may not come through your headphones. If not, there are subtitles, and I'll also summarize.

01:28:43 --> 01:28:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Can you hear?

01:28:50 --> 01:28:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and test it out here.

01:28:54 --> 01:29:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, they use the VPN to change their location. Also, they use foreign SIM cards, like American SIM cards, Canadian SIM cards.

01:29:01 --> 01:29:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Our UK SIM cards group, uh, yeah, looks like they're from different countries.

01:29:05 --> 01:29:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Is there no base kit on the bacon?

01:29:07 --> 01:29:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The losses are mostly Chinese stakings. Other countries also are now involved in these scam operations. They identified more than 60 countries victim in scam compounds. Were you ever involved in building? They gave me.

01:29:22 --> 01:29:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, one time, they gave me 3,000 number. They said, your five-day target is to text these 3,000 people. Gamers play a role of single mom, and they maintain the target. Yeah, this is reporting, so we can… So, thank you. So, to summarize, for those at the back who might not have been able to hear the audio or see the subtitles.

01:29:42 --> 01:29:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: There is, um, targeting of more than 60 countries. They're using, uh, SIMs to appear to be local numbers in different countries. This will not be news to many of you in the room, but also targeting of, like, single mums and so on.

01:29:57 --> 01:30:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and… and that the… the role of the infrastructure, who's organising the infrastructure, who's building the website, that that was really done by separate specialist departments or, um, or organisations, so…

01:30:12 --> 01:30:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Very much not at the front line, something done centrally. Lucien, this gives us a link into the final informational question in this segment, which is where is the kit?

01:30:29 --> 01:30:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that the scammers are using. We're going to hear a little bit more about our research, and then I'm going to pass to Ian Young of Mastercard for his comments as well on what you're seeing in the trends. Lucien. Hello, thank you very much. I'm an internet engineer by background.

01:30:44 --> 01:31:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So this is a geeky subject for me, and it can all get a bit deep and geeky, so we're going to try and keep it as light as possible. There is a series of little charts and graphs coming up. You don't have to study them. If you want to find out more, then come and have a chat with me, but we're trying to pick out one pertinent thing from each.

01:31:01 --> 01:31:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But what we're doing is we're going through what I call the weaknesses in the internet as a supply chain, providing services for scammers. And I hope that this will make an interesting background for you when you consider the type of things you can do, not just with legal and regulatory, but also with soft power.

01:31:20 --> 01:31:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and influence. So we're going to start off with the geographic distribution of top-level domain name registries in the GSE data, in the signals that we're seeing. So we're able to reverse engineer from the signals, particularly URL signals, which is what we're looking at here.

01:31:36 --> 01:31:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We're doing work with the likes of Somos and others in telephone numbers, but here we're focusing again on the URLs. If you just do a simple count across the board, VeriSign dominates because it produces the most domain names in the world.

01:31:53 --> 01:32:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and that's… that's not surprising, but what we're more interested in, we maintain… they're like, kind of, soccer league tables of the ones who are able to deter fraud and scam the most. They're at the top, we celebrate their success, and those at the bottom attract the most threat reporters.

01:32:10 --> 01:32:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: reports, uh, we find that the ones who are attracting the most threat reports are Japan, China, Philippines, and microstate island nations, but most interestingly, dominated by Seychelles, way at the top, with a 21.68%.

01:32:28 --> 01:32:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: bad report rates, so a lot of their stock is appearing in threat reports with their .help. And that's not surprising, really, because there's a lot of help desk fraud out there. At the moment, I would say that these charts.

01:32:44 --> 01:33:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: change all the time as we keep looking at the data, and that's why we need to work towards and keep moving towards real-time threat intel. So, this is the idea, and I'll skip through these a bit more. What does that mean for the US? The US sits 19th in the list. We're thinking about local here.

01:33:01 --> 01:33:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But a Californian registry ranks fourth worst globally for report rate, that is .coupon, with a 9.26% report rate of poor signals. Our observations are Innovation Services, which manages .help, is based in the Seychelles.

01:33:20 --> 01:33:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It is a shell company for a Hong Kong operation, and there's quite a number of Hong Kong top-level domain name registries that are appearing in the bottom of our league table, so they might have weaknesses in their working practices.

01:33:36 --> 01:33:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that it seemed to make it more attractive for scammers to use. DotCoupon is based in California. There is a common factor there, and we're going to more and more be trying to find what we… I wouldn't call this common control, but common factor. We are really interested.

01:33:51 --> 01:34:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: in Scott's world, of common control as well, who's actually controlling clusters of bad assets. But this… they both have back-end services provided by Central NIC, which is based in the UK. So when we think about soft power and influence, we can think about those common factors. Why?

01:34:07 --> 01:34:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Is this business servicing these businesses that are servicing scammers?

01:34:13 --> 01:34:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, when we think about domain name registrars, the likes of GoDaddy and others, it's domin- uh, dominated again by the US, but they're, they're providing the most domain names as a, as a, as a business. Um, but when we look again, uh, I'll just try and change this.

01:34:30 --> 01:34:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: when we look at league table, what's happening? Why Sweden? At the bottom there, with a very high percentage, 9.5% of its stock, is a single, low-ranked registrar. That registrar means US is 16th in the list.

01:34:46 --> 01:34:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: but Global Domain Group in California is… has a 38%, over a third of its stock is appearing in GSE reports.

01:35:01 --> 01:35:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Sometimes the touch is magic, and sometimes… okay. Our observation here is that both NameSRS in Sweden, Global Domain Name Group, California, they both have reseller automation kits and WHMCS plugins for the techies amongst you.

01:35:19 --> 01:35:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: which enable white-label APIs, rapid domain name provision without any know-your-customer identification at all. And the kind of stock they're shifting, global domain group stock.coms you would expect, but also XYZ, Top, Shop, CFD, that's actually Clothing, Fashion and Design.

01:35:39 --> 01:35:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Believe it or not, these are appearing in a lot of scammy URLs, and the consumer doesn't know the difference. Finally, registrants, US, China, Iceland lead, highlighting the use of proxy services in Iceland.

01:35:55 --> 01:36:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, is it Namecheap, their business? They register a business in Iceland, which is the Icelandic Penis Museum, as their proxy service provider. That's a kind of putting the finger up to everyone and saying, that's where we're based.

01:36:10 --> 01:36:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Like it or not. Okay, um, countries in emerging regions, if we're thinking about IP addresses, uh, the South Americas, Africas, and telcos. A lot of the big old telcos are appearing in our, in our scam.

01:36:25 --> 01:36:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: scam reports. I think that's enough for now. Thank you very much. Um, a lot to digest, but I think that the overall picture is, when you look at this kit that scammers are using, even a single data point can imply multiple jurisdictions.

01:36:41 --> 01:36:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And we'll return to that as we hear from Fran and Andre in a moment. But first of all, let me pass the floor to you, Ian Young, Senior Vice President of Security Products at Mastercard. Welcome to the panel. And it would be great to hear what Mastercard is seeing.

01:36:57 --> 01:37:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: About the kit that is being exploited by scammers.

01:37:02 --> 01:37:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, I'll actually talk a little bit first about MasterCard in general, and one of the most amazing things about MasterCard is our global reach. We are in something like 210 countries, territories around the world. Pretty much if it's not sanctioned, we are operating there, so our reach is pretty much unprecedented.

01:37:21 --> 01:37:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And one of the… you know, one of the things that really sets MasterCard apart is our… our brand is built on trust. And that means a couple different things, right? So…

01:37:31 --> 01:37:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The first one is trust in that your payment is gonna go through. Whether you're in San Francisco, Singapore, or Sao Paulo, you trust that when you try to make a payment, it's going to work.

01:37:43 --> 01:38:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The second one is that, uh, a trust that we are out there protecting you as a consumer from the likes of fraud and scams. And then the third one is, if something does go wrong, if there is fraud, then you are protected with our zero liability clause, saying you are not responsible for.

01:38:01 --> 01:38:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: unauthorized fraud when using a MasterCard. So again, the reach that we have and the trust that we've underpinned in the network is really unprecedented, and as a part of that, we've invested heavily over the years in.

01:38:16 --> 01:38:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Building and enhancing our fraud models beyond just the payment data that we see, but integrating things like identity and cyber signal into those models so that we are looking at a much more broad view of it just other than a payment.

01:38:31 --> 01:38:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Right? What other data and signal can we bring in?

01:38:35 --> 01:38:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Where maybe, you know, I think, uh, is important for us to talk about is, similar to what Emmy was saying at one of the sessions earlier, is there is so much more data out there that we don't see, and…

01:38:49 --> 01:39:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: if you think about MasterCard and where we sit in the scam journey, we're basically the final mile. What happens ahead of, or before us, if we don't see the data, then, you know, we are relying on what we have, obviously, so working with the likes of.

01:39:04 --> 01:39:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the telcos, and the social media companies, and even GSE, of whom we are currently conducting a pilot to see where is the value on that data, how can we integrate it into our network, and then back to what I was saying at the beginning, the… the…

01:39:19 --> 01:39:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: global reach of our network. How can we take and ingest all that data and signal and provide the security and the trust back out into the, you know, into our customers, who are the banks and the acquirers, in order to protect the consumers from, uh.

01:39:33 --> 01:39:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: from the scams. Thank you very much, Ian. There's so much more I would like to ask all of these panelists, but this is the first of three panels that we're going to have in this hour-long session. So, could I ask you to leave your microphones and the clicker, and make your way back to the seating area with great thanks.

01:39:50 --> 01:40:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and ask, um, Fran Dowling, um, Andre Nung, and if Carol House is in the room, I can't see you, Carol, but if you're here, join now, otherwise we'll just, um, hear from, uh, Fran and from Andre. So if you can make your way safely up to the stage.

01:40:06 --> 01:40:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And…

01:40:08 --> 01:40:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And I have a clickers, because I know you've both got slides, so good luck with that. Um, while you, um, get familiar with the slides, um, Fran Dowling is joining us here from the UK. She's Deputy Director, Head of Fraud Policy at the UK National Crime Agency.

01:40:24 --> 01:40:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And Andre Nung is Deputy Director at the GovTech Anti-Scam Products in Singapore. So, um, Fran, um…

01:40:34 --> 01:40:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We are addressing this. We've heard about the multi-dimensional geographies of scam. What do we do about it and what do you do about it at the UK? So the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you. Much appreciated. So the first thing I need to correct though is that I'm not part of the National Crime Agency. Oh, sorry. It's all right. I'm part of the Home Office.

01:40:56 --> 01:41:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So we're the lead department, uh, in the UK for tackling fraud. But, um, it's not an issue, because I've got colleagues here from the NCI. I just wanted to say that now, in case they're a little bit surprised.

01:41:08 --> 01:41:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: No, no, that's completely fine. Um, so, what are the… what's the UK doing? So, firstly, in the UK, as you won't be surprised from seeing some of the slides there, uh, fraud, uh, cybercrime is a massive problem, so…

01:41:23 --> 01:41:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: it's now 47% of all crime in the UK, and then when you add in the cybercrime elements and the ransomware, that goes up over 50, so it's a huge issue for us. 70% of that is coming from overseas, so a big part is around what are we doing internationally, because there's a limit to what we can do domestically.

01:41:41 --> 01:41:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So the first thing I would call out is the UNODC Interpol Global Fraud Summit, which happened back in March. Um, that was super useful on a number of, uh, for a number of reasons. One, it really pulled in, uh, industry in the private sector.

01:41:57 --> 01:42:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: which is like a key part of the picture. Secondly, we are talking, you know, 115 countries that attended, 40 of those at ministerial level, and I think 500 reps on the industry side.

01:42:13 --> 01:42:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: This really was a game changer for us in getting the international community to look and focus on this as an issue. Even last week, the Home Secretary was at the five country ministerial. So that's, you know, five eyes level with Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US.

01:42:28 --> 01:42:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And there, fraud was a major plank. And the agreement, again, was that we need to work more with the private sector to ensure that we're sharing our signals and working together. So that was hugely helpful. We do things bilaterally as well, so we have MOUs with countries like.

01:42:43 --> 01:42:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Nigeria and Vietnam and more are being worked through so that we can work directly with their law enforcement. And also, we back Interpol's global task force, so really to go in and tackle the scam centres.

01:42:56 --> 01:43:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, um, one thing I did want to focus on, and I know I've got very short of time, is I wanted to flag something called the Online Crime center. And this is a major part of the UK's fraud strategy. And this is really talking to the different picture that we all see in the room. So the Global Signals Exchange is, uh, kind of a really important part of that as well.

01:43:14 --> 01:43:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And what the Online Crime Center does is it's, for the first time, it's putting together pieces of the puzzle. So the different bits of the jigsaw that we all see, it's sharing those data signals, it's working together to focus and have sprints on, kind of, key vulnerabilities that we're finding.

01:43:30 --> 01:43:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And it really is a sort of a public-private shared initiative together. So, um…

01:43:36 --> 01:43:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Conscious of time, I'll just quickly skip on. So now, when we looked at the earlier number of signals, you know, we're talking millions and millions and millions. This looks really minor. But what I want to say about it is that the Online Crime Center is currently in tech alpha stage. It's moving into tech beta.

01:43:53 --> 01:44:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: in January. So at the moment, what we're doing is we're testing the data that we've got and sharing it with partners via things like the Global Signals Exchange to understand from you what the best data is that we can share. So this is law enforcement data.

01:44:08 --> 01:44:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And what we're doing is we're sending the stuff out, and then we're getting it enriched and understanding from feedback from industry partners about what's working, and that has already led directly to arrests in the UK. So I look, Lucy, at your slides, and you're talking about some of the back-end services that are being provided in the UK.

01:44:24 --> 01:44:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And I'm thinking, that's the sort of information we need, because from a law enforcement perspective in the UK, we can act very quickly domestically. We need to sort it out internationally, and we're doing lots of things, but that's really useful.

01:44:35 --> 01:44:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, so, uh, I would, uh, I'd also talk about one of the sprints that occurred in the banking sector, in the financial sector, where there was a focus on a particular type of fraud, and, uh, basically coming together to intensify our efforts to understand signals that, um, different parts of the sectors were seeing.

01:44:53 --> 01:45:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: it resulted in a fix that the banks were able to implement that designed out 85% to 95% of that type of fraud, which, again, just talks to the power of the data sharing and the signals that we can do. So, the final thing I'll say is that that online crime center, when the Home Secretary discussed it with her counterparts at the five-country ministerial.

01:45:11 --> 01:45:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: went down extremely well, and I feel that it's the sort of initiative where the stuff we're sharing is not domestic in nature, it's really global, whereas we can roll this out now, use this model more internationally to have a real impact on the scams that we're seeing.

01:45:26 --> 01:45:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Fran, thank you so much. Um, Fran from the Home Office. Um, uh, and, um…

01:45:33 --> 01:45:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think this is such a useful jump-off point on the what do we do about it. We've seen the distributed geographies of scams. Even in a single scam, you'll have many geographies. And for the sort of domestic law enforcement piece, it has always been very local in nature.

01:45:52 --> 01:46:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And what the UK is doing is incredibly visionary in terms of bilateral partnerships with different countries and the sort of the OCC pilot. So thank you very much for sharing that information with us and we're very proud to partner.

01:46:07 --> 01:46:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: with you through the OCC. I'm going to pass the floor now to Andre Ng, Deputy Director at GovTech Singapore, also a really valued and early partner of the GSE. Andre, perhaps you can take this thread of, you know, what do we do about a transnational problem at.

01:46:25 --> 01:46:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the, you know, given the local structures that we have. Thank you, the floor is yours. Sure, uh, thanks Emily. Um, so…

01:46:33 --> 01:46:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: This is a story about how we converted a problematic registrar that was registered in Singapore and converted them to a cooperative entity. Specifically, we were able to reduce.

01:46:49 --> 01:47:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: their share of contribution to our disrupted domains by 95%. So for context, the Singapore government scans about 500,000 websites a day and blocks about somewhere between 400 to 1000 websites.

01:47:06 --> 01:47:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: a day as well. And it did not take long for us to realize that actually, you know, there's this registrar in Singapore, which have not been named, contributed to 40% of nearly 40% of these block domains.

01:47:22 --> 01:47:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and when we looked at, uh, GSE's international or global, um, leaderboard, this registrar was…

01:47:31 --> 01:47:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: also at the bottom 10. So they are not just a local problem, they are a global problem.

01:47:37 --> 01:47:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And instead of using the typical regulatory legal levers on them, we tried to do.

01:47:46 --> 01:47:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: we tried to approach it in a different way. We did three things. One, we issued them a warning to say that, look.

01:47:52 --> 01:48:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We realized that this is happening and that we will use our legal levers if we have to. And they were given three months to get their act together and to see improvement.

01:48:05 --> 01:48:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The next thing we did was, in the same meeting, was to give them data, hard data on the websites that we have identified as scams that belong to them, that were under their care.

01:48:15 --> 01:48:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, these were unrefutable. Uh, I think they were also fresh. I think as, um, as fresh as the day before, uh, I think, oh, I think with over 10,000 records.

01:48:26 --> 01:48:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The next thing, interesting thing we did was to share with them a rescue package set up by GSE. So this rescue package, thanks to Lucian.

01:48:38 --> 01:48:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Was created, uh, just for registrars who are interested to.

01:48:43 --> 01:48:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: made a… this… make a… earnest effort to try to turn things around. So this rescue package consisted of…

01:48:49 --> 01:48:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: two main things. One was, um, the data feeds that were contributed by the community. So, um, anything that.

01:48:58 --> 01:49:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: related to that registrar, they will receive it as a data feed in this rescue package. The other thing was a leaderboard that they could refer to to measure objectively what their performance.

01:49:10 --> 01:49:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: were, uh, compared to the rest of the, um, registrars around the world on GSE.

01:49:16 --> 01:49:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And…

01:49:18 --> 01:49:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: They took this in a very serious way. They did three things. One, they started immediately within weeks to implement a disruption kind of workflow within their organization. So they took in the data feeds that were contributed by the community partners within GSE.

01:49:35 --> 01:49:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and escalated it for disruption. So, they… if I'm not wrong, they… they disrupted about…

01:49:43 --> 01:49:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Usually about 51%. So half of it that was sent to them, they would take it down.

01:49:50 --> 01:49:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Second was they tightened their verification process.

01:49:55 --> 01:50:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, KYC, uh, was tightened. Um, you could no longer use a throwaway.

01:50:01 --> 01:50:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: email, uh, service to register for an account on that registrar website and get a domain. You now have to go through, um, one of the better, like, more robust, uh, uh, email providers.

01:50:15 --> 01:50:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The last thing was, they lowered their threshold tolerance for repeated offenders. So, I think they had a, um, no…

01:50:23 --> 01:50:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: no bad record policy. I think they went to the extreme of, like, as long as your account has been, um, tainted with a significant proportion of scam domains, they will disable the account entirely. So, they took really drastic action on that.

01:50:38 --> 01:50:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And within weeks, they didn't have to wait till the end of the quarter, or 3 months. Within weeks, I'm talking about, like, 4 to 5 weeks, they were able to reduce their contributions from.

01:50:49 --> 01:50:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: about 40% to… down to 2%, as you can see in the graph here. So, that was, like, a 95% drop on our end, uh, from a local perspective.

01:50:59 --> 01:51:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Globally, the GSE.

01:51:02 --> 01:51:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: index drop, which is, I think, a measurement of threat level, is reduced significantly as well. So they are doing well. And in fact, they were doing so well, they became, I think, one of the first few entities to give feedback on the platform.

01:51:18 --> 01:51:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I see Emily nodding, so yes.

01:51:22 --> 01:51:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And we were very encouraged by that. And for us in Singapore, it was a meaningful win, because we did not have to spend additional public resources to try to nudge this problematic registrar.

01:51:35 --> 01:51:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to do better. We, in a way, use soft power to get to what we want to do. And for this registrar, it was extremely valuable as well, because.

01:51:45 --> 01:52:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: For the first time in their operation, they could objectively measure how well the controls they were implementing and measure that against the real world impact that they saw on the GSE leaderboard.

01:52:01 --> 01:52:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So there is a very objective measure of.

01:52:05 --> 01:52:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: How well they were doing.

01:52:07 --> 01:52:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And the last, I think, which is…

01:52:10 --> 01:52:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: often not emphasized enough is because GSE is a common, neutral platform of sorts.

01:52:17 --> 01:52:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That transparency with this registrar created a foundation of trust.

01:52:23 --> 01:52:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Because they knew how they were measured against.

01:52:28 --> 01:52:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And it was by a third party that they could trust.

01:52:31 --> 01:52:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: they can be very confident in the investments that they put in, knowing that the Singapore government recognizes the improvements that they made. So I think this trust that we have built is a bit priceless, and I think it's a model that we want to.

01:52:46 --> 01:52:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um…

01:52:47 --> 01:53:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: promote or promote with the industry moving forward. Thank you very much, Andre, and thank you, Fran, as well. I'd like you to, yes, give your microphones, and I'll call up the final speakers today.

01:53:02 --> 01:53:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So please can Mary, Will, Jean-Jacques and Axenia come to the stage and take your places. But I think just recapping on what we've heard here, you've seen from the UK approach, which is like, this is a transnational problem, we're going to go out of our borders and try and make bilateral.

01:53:24 --> 01:53:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: um, uh, um, uh, agreements, uh, but also, uh, and how that is, uh, uh, reaping fruit and also working through the OCC and so on. So please come to the stage, uh, Jean-Jacques, uh, Mary, Aksenia, and Will.

01:53:41 --> 01:53:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, but also hearing about the value of intensely local actions and that use of soft power in response to, um, an evidence-based approach in the, the GSE league table. So…

01:53:54 --> 01:54:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Nearly there, and thank you to all of our speakers for keeping your remarks so crisp and showing such, uh, discipline there. So, uh, let me now introduce you to, um, Mary Odishu from Amazon, Will Blay, uh, from.

01:54:10 --> 01:54:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Microsoft, Jean-Jacques Sahel of Google, and Aksenia Bidassi of TikTok. All of you sit in a trust and safety role in your respective organizations. All of you have transnational view and reach. Of course, your views are.

01:54:26 --> 01:54:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You have a large scope, but also limited visibility of certain threats. You've heard what the answers to the questions, you know, where are the victims? Everywhere. Where are the scammers? The scam centers' operations are extremely dynamic and spread across different geographies.

01:54:45 --> 01:55:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But if we shift our attention to the kit that is being used by, uh, and abused by scammers, you've got a whole load of other geographies mixed in. What do we do about it? From your perspective, I'll just go along the chain, it would be great to just have.

01:55:01 --> 01:55:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: a couple of remarks from each of you, you know, representing major platform ecosystems, how do we utilize share signal data like the GSE to design out vulnerabilities, but any other remarks you'd like to make? Jean-Jacques, can I start with you?

01:55:16 --> 01:55:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you. I hope you can hear me. I've never been to a silent disco, so I don't really know how it works.

01:55:22 --> 01:55:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and I'm not gonna try to do the beat at the same time, always very tempting. Um, so, thanks. I think it was great, actually, to see both the data that Lucian shared, but also start to see with Andre, for instance, and Fran, also.

01:55:38 --> 01:55:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: how that data can be translated. And I think what was interesting with the data that Lucian showed, in a way, it needs a little bit of interpretation, right? You can't just take it like that. You have to marry it together and translate it into things that other actors can take.

01:55:55 --> 01:56:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: in at least two directions. One is, it informs us on the types of infrastructures that the scammers are misusing, right? We've talked about DNS here with Andrea, and it's an understanding, okay, there are totally legitimate infrastructures and legitimate companies.

01:56:12 --> 01:56:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that are operating these infrastructures, whether it's digital infrastructures or financial infrastructures, such as Ian was talking about, they are, you know, hijacking accounts, they're hijacking DNS, etc. But we need that data to understand exactly where that happens.

01:56:27 --> 01:56:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: who are those legitimate organizations that we can work with, such as the one that Andre was talking about. And that helps us to think, you know, how can we disrupt the scammer's operations, the scammer's business, at scale? So we need that intel sharing really as a foundation for.

01:56:43 --> 01:56:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: for a sort of structural disruption of the scammer's ecosystem. So that's one key pillar, which in fact we have now a GASA initiative within the Enforcement Working Group of GASA. We'll talk about it in the Enforcement Working Group tomorrow.

01:56:59 --> 01:57:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, where we're very much going to take, uh, data from GSE and also a few others, really to help, um, understand where are those inflection points, where are those infrastructures that the scammers are misusing, what can we do to create intelligent friction.

01:57:16 --> 01:57:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to make the life of the scammers harder, so that basically they can't operate their business. And you've seen Andre touching on one of those critical infrastructure areas here, working with a DNS registrar to improve their practices. Imagine doing that worldwide, at scale, with all the DNS registries and registrars out there.

01:57:33 --> 01:57:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And where needed, with relevant law enforcement agencies, if we need to. We're hoping that we can take forward an initiative where most of the DNS community is going to work with us willingly, because they are.

01:57:44 --> 01:57:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: on the whole legitimate organizations. But if there are a few recalcitrant ones, then that's when we might have government agencies and law enforcement agencies stepping in.

01:57:53 --> 01:58:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So that's one aspect in terms of the structural disruption of those scammers' exploited infrastructures. And the other one is straightforward enforcement. You've heard it from Fran with the great case study that we had, and I know our friends at Microsoft had similar experiences, where.

01:58:09 --> 01:58:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You have a platform like GAC that sort of provides the bedrocks for some initial intel, and from there you spin up a much broader, bigger case with a full-on legal referral where the private sector actor is able to do some forensic analysis and the likes.

01:58:27 --> 01:58:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, identify, for instance, where the scammers are based, who they are, et cetera, and then, uh, pass on the full dossier to the relevant law enforcement agency or agencies.

01:58:37 --> 01:58:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and then action can be taken, and the scammer's pursued, and again, dismantled. And I'm just gonna stop here, but conclude by really saying.

01:58:45 --> 01:59:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think we really need to prioritize. I think we all know here that we need a multi-pronged approach to tackling scammers. We need awareness raising, we need some very basic legislation, sure, but really, if we have to prioritize our efforts going forward, we need to go after the root cause of the problem, which is organized crime.

01:59:02 --> 01:59:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: weighing into scams over the past decade to make it the massive threat that it is to all of us. And we have to have action in that space. There's only so much that technical solutions and awareness raising are gonna do. We need to go after the criminals.

01:59:15 --> 01:59:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Hence why we need to really speed through with intel sharing, because that's the foundation of enforcement. Thank you very much, Jean-Jacques. Yeah, very, very important remarks there. And also highlighting the role of the DNS, again, legitimate businesses who are exploited by organized crime.

01:59:37 --> 01:59:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And sort of extending the fold, finance sector, the big tech, telcos, and DNS, so that everyone can work together. Will Blay from Microsoft, the floor is yours. Can everyone hear me? Good. Certainly, obviously, second everything that Jean-Jacques just said.

01:59:52 --> 02:00:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, I think from our perspective, and this has been hit on already, but we view this as a puzzle. We are Microsoft, just like everyone up here, we have a lot of data, but we have come to the realization that while our data is rich, we can use it for many of our specific use cases, there still is gaps, right? And this is where things like the GSE can really help us.

02:00:08 --> 02:00:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: bridge those gaps in terms of getting data from external parties, whether that's other peers in the tech sector, financial services, governments, law enforcement, and whatnot. We can really bring that picture, that puzzle together to make sense of what we're looking at, and then take disruptive action. I think a great use case actually happened earlier this year through the GSE was.

02:00:26 --> 02:00:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Our digital crimes unit disrupted a fraud and scam marketplace called RedVDS. There's a public case study online. You can read more about it there. But essentially, after the disruption, we shared a variety of IOCs with Google, which then allowed Google to go and take their action and further disrupt that marketplace.

02:00:42 --> 02:00:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think also in the context of data sharing and kind of a commitment that we've made to ourselves internally and to others is there's two sides to this. First is when we are ingesting signal from others, we owe it to you to give feedback on what did we do with it? How valuable was it?

02:00:57 --> 02:01:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Was it not valuable at all? Thanks, and we can try something else. And conversely, when we give signal to other, that's a data point we're always looking for as well. And actually, we're tracking ourselves on is, how valuable is the data that we're giving externally to our partners and to the industry? Because if it's not, we want to make edits, make changes, and give you data you can actually use.

02:01:15 --> 02:01:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think one final point I'll mention too that hasn't been hit on yet is the legal and privacy framework to all this. When we started down this journey a few years ago and really getting into external data sharing, you could all imagine and probably experience it yourselves, the legal and privacy pushback on what you can versus can't do.

02:01:32 --> 02:01:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: A lot of red tape. Of course, we want to color inside the lines. And without getting into specifics, we've had some, I'd say, pretty significant breakthroughs internally recently with our legal and privacy teams on certain kind of carve outs or ways we can share data that is an approved compliant manner.

02:01:47 --> 02:02:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think that's key because ultimately, again, it's been repeated a million times with how quickly these scammers and fraudsters move. If you have data you can share with somebody, but you can't get the sign off to do it, you're just kind of beating your head against a wall. So happy to have conversations with people about that kind of offline as well around what we've done.

02:02:03 --> 02:02:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, because I think as an industry, if we can move towards some sort of common taxonomy, or framework, or, you know, way we can all think about treating this sort of data, that also eliminates a lot of guardrails, uh, and, you know, things that would inhibit our ability to take down the bad actors, so. Thank you very much, and thanks for touching on the.

02:02:21 --> 02:02:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You know, the legal compliance side, because, of course, the criminals don't have the same constraints in terms of following the law, but it's really important that data sharing is lawful and is legally compliant and protects fundamental rights.

02:02:36 --> 02:02:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Mary Odishu, I'm delighted to have you on the panel from Amazon, a relative newcomer to the team within the GSE, and we're thrilled to be working with you. It would be great to have Amazon's reflections and your reflections on what are the implications of the geographies, these dispersed geographies of scams.

02:02:55 --> 02:02:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: from your perspective.

02:02:57 --> 02:03:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think it just makes it a lot harder to do what we're doing. We already have to deal with the… when we see the customer reports, they're coming in from different places, and that doesn't mean that the customers that are reporting the scams are the same customers that might be experiencing the same level of financial harm.

02:03:14 --> 02:03:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So being able to connect the dots and working with different organizations, partnering with the one-to-one exchanges, and then working with organizations like the GSE has helped us really kind of get a better understanding of how to target like what has been said is the real bad actors.

02:03:29 --> 02:03:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Stopping scams at the source is really what our underlying goal is. We've worked on building our own proactive detection, but like every organization here, you know that the view that you have is very limited. And even when we're able to build those detection systems and collect signals, we know that we're not really seeing the full picture, so that's why.

02:03:48 --> 02:04:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: there's been a lot of, uh, conversations and importance in the signal sharing that organizations like the GSC are doing, and the great, uh, one-to-one relationships that this has kind of brought on, um, in front of us through that organization.

02:04:02 --> 02:04:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, in addition to, uh, signal sharing, we are, like, as hard as we work when it comes to signal sharing, these bad actors are moving. They're moving from one channel to another, and they're moving very, very quickly. This is not, like, weeks that it takes them to set up. It's within hours they're shifted and they've moved.

02:04:17 --> 02:04:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So for us, another thing that we've been prioritizing at Amazon is finding a way to arm our customers with ways to validate whether a communication is coming from Amazon. So if you haven't seen our booth yet, please stop by. We launched today utilizing Alexa for shopping as part of that functionality as well.

02:04:37 --> 02:04:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So we really want to be able to give customers a way to surface things that are a concern for them, help them understand how to identify what a scam looks like, be able to share those signals with us, so that way we can, you know, cycle that into what we've already identified.

02:04:52 --> 02:05:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Share it with partner teams so that way we can help build on those signals. And then at the end, when a customer is harmed, being able to help provide that support at the end. Because as we've heard from some of the survivors of scams, which has been wonderful, let me tell you, for somebody who's attending for the first time.

02:05:09 --> 02:05:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: is really understanding that the real impact that it has on our customers. Thank you very much. And, you know, great point about the human impact of scams. This is something that motivates all of us. And, you know, for those of us who are sort of in the data side, you know.

02:05:25 --> 02:05:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: it's important not to reduce people to numbers and graphs, even though we do need the numbers and graphs as well to understand the big picture, so thank you very much for those remarks. Um, Aksenia Bidassi of TikTok, welcome to the panel. Again, you know, a global organization.

02:05:41 --> 02:05:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you see, uh, you see the trends, you're seeing, uh, different geographies. It would be great to have your thoughts about, you know, what do we do about these distributed geographies from position of the private sector?

02:05:58 --> 02:05:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Well…

02:05:59 --> 02:06:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Tough question, and I feel like almost every speaker is here have been…

02:06:04 --> 02:06:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: reading my notes, because I have very, very similar answers, and I think we kind of have figured it out, but at the same time, there's so much unknown that we're trying to figure out. I have to say that, from TikTok's perspective, we also face challenges, because we know scammers.

02:06:20 --> 02:06:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: They're international. They target their victims who are not in their countries, and they use money mules, again, who are not part of their country as well. So to add complications to that, we have data privacy issues. We have legal implications.

02:06:35 --> 02:06:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So it's like piling a problem on top of another one. So it feels like to catch a scammer, it's going to take a mountain of work to get there. And today when I was meeting a couple of people, we were talking about data sharing and how helpful it is.

02:06:50 --> 02:06:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Not just for TikTok, but for also TikTok to share their data to, you know, GSC.

02:06:55 --> 02:07:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to all the partners, it was quite striking to me to realize that how useful it is to have GSC, because.

02:07:03 --> 02:07:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I was thinking in my head, thinking, oh, you have all these legal issues that we have to comply with when sharing data, and have talked to the legal team if we're going to share this outside of GSC, but, you know, having… being part of GSC and sharing those data on the platform.

02:07:19 --> 02:07:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: at least helps to resolve that one question of data privacy, legal issues. And I have to say that for TikTok, this is extremely helpful, not just to share data, but also to receive them, because for us, it's very important data privacy is taken seriously. We have very strict controls and protocols.

02:07:36 --> 02:07:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: for employees who have access to these data. So, having GSC and being part of it is pretty amazing. And just to highlight a few challenges that we see across the platform, the number one is limited visibility. We don't see the whole picture from beginning to end of scams.

02:07:54 --> 02:08:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So what we see is how scammers start their operations on TikTok and on other social media platforms as well, but we sometimes are blind on how they take the next step. So the trends we see, for example, would be they lure the victim and they tell them, now come offline on this website or this.

02:08:11 --> 02:08:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: communication platform, and let's just take it from there. And that's it, we lose the visibility. So having signals which give us further information, such as URLs, phone numbers, is extremely helpful to at least catch them, take them down, and share the data with other organizations as well.

02:08:28 --> 02:08:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I think that that's a really good first step. And I mentioned this in my previous panel. I think that it's going to be extremely hard to catch the scammers. I don't think we have one and it will take a long time. But if we can add friction at every single level, you know, if we can add friction when they join TikTok or at the platforms, when they try to use a phone number and they get friction there as well.

02:08:49 --> 02:08:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That is extremely frustrating to them, and will slow them down considerably, and hopefully that should slow down the whole scam operations as a whole.

02:08:57 --> 02:09:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you very much, all of you, for your remarks, and also the previous panelists. We're just at time now. I'd like to thank you all in the audience for attending today. And, you know, we've heard about how distributed the victimization is.

02:09:13 --> 02:09:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the perpetrators, and also how a single data point can imply multiple different geographies. That is both a source of frustration and a complexity, but also of opportunity. Because, as we heard from other speakers.

02:09:29 --> 02:09:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: there are opportunities for local action that can have international effect. And where you have transnational actors, such as the global payment systems with Mastercard, the big tech platforms who have that reach, there you have the opportunity to.

02:09:47 --> 02:10:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: join up islands of information and intelligence, as well as leap across from private sector to public sector, who also have the unique ability to arrest victims. This is what we're all.

02:10:02 --> 02:10:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: arrest perpetrators and suspects. Sorry about that.

02:10:07 --> 02:10:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What we're all about is trying to turn this tide against scams together. It takes collective action. The distributed geography compels an international approach and a multi-stakeholder approach. So, thank you all of our speakers today, Jean-Jacques, Will, Mary.

02:10:24 --> 02:10:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and also Xenia, to all of them, I'm not going to name them, thank you. The session is closed, and thank you very much for attending.

02:10:56 --> 02:10:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I get to open the door.

02:11:00 --> 02:11:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: There we go. Where is it?

02:11:03 --> 02:11:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: This is how we were sitting last time, wasn't it?

02:11:05 --> 02:11:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I like the time. Oh, yes. Listen, if it's just spending a little bit, like, it'll end up happening. Yeah, yeah. All right.

02:11:13 --> 02:11:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yes, and go back to the hotel room.

02:11:15 --> 02:11:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Are you tired?

02:11:19 --> 02:11:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Bye. Bye.

02:11:21 --> 02:11:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You're going to be the mayor, I think.

02:11:25 --> 02:11:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And then I think the treasurer?

02:11:35 --> 02:11:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: of the city and county of San Francisco.

02:11:39 --> 02:11:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The treasurer of the City and County of San Francisco is this amazing guy.

02:11:44 --> 02:11:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I don't know, I met him like 15 or 20 years ago.

02:11:48 --> 02:11:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: He does all sorts of stuff.

02:11:50 --> 02:11:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And gets the parking ticket.

02:11:53 --> 02:12:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And then sets up programs to, like, help people, like, have savings accounts, and, um…

02:12:00 --> 02:12:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, he does all sorts of great stuff. And his team is wonderful. Jennifer. Hello. Hi, Jennifer. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Oh my.

02:12:08 --> 02:12:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Hey, do you know Andre? Yes, we met very well. Oh, that's right. We had some time together this morning. So this is you over in Canada, right? Yes, yes. Canada. Yeah, just, you know, just that little thing up there north of like Ontario.

02:12:23 --> 02:12:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I just forgot about that. So you would not be coming to this.

02:12:28 --> 02:12:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: No, no, no. No. Yeah, yeah.

02:12:34 --> 02:12:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That's the private sector responsible. Having said that, I work very closely with the government, with law enforcement and with.

02:12:41 --> 02:12:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Wait, wait, wait, though, but is GovTech a government agency? It is, okay. It is. Wait a minute, okay. Yeah, so you've got two governments, one private sector. Right, exactly. Yes, and one third sector.

02:12:55 --> 02:12:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The glue, the buttons, and the glue lines. Very true.

02:12:59 --> 02:13:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That's very true. All right. Bye.

02:13:05 --> 02:13:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Okay.

02:13:07 --> 02:13:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Can you sweep the other one? No.

02:13:11 --> 02:13:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: reschedule.

02:13:14 --> 02:13:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, you're a little…

02:13:16 --> 02:13:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And the only notes I have are what Kate said. Yeah, so once again, let's talk to each other.

02:13:22 --> 02:13:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Do you want your notes? Go get your notes. I'm not going to start. No, it's all right. By the time I found the right page.

02:13:28 --> 02:13:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Sure. Okay.

02:13:30 --> 02:13:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But I've realized I've stretched out some notes.

02:13:33 --> 02:13:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Which is great theory. I actually can't read it. I can't read my own writing. Excellent. That's great. I'll make it up as I go along.

02:13:48 --> 02:13:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: All right, do we want to start? Francine, let's go. All right, are these on?

02:13:55 --> 02:14:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Good afternoon everybody. Time to put your things on.

02:14:02 --> 02:14:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The disco has started. You need to wear the headsets. The disco is starting. We're starting the disco. Somebody's on green.

02:14:11 --> 02:14:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You want to be on red.

02:14:13 --> 02:14:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Red. We're in the red team. I think we're in the red team.

02:14:18 --> 02:14:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Now they're on blue. Team Red.

02:14:19 --> 02:14:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Alright. Mic test. Mic test. Do you want to adjust your volume? I'll keep talking. I could start singing. I did some singing yesterday. We're working 9 to 5. What a way to make a living. Barely getting by. Okay.

02:14:34 --> 02:14:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, that was just for your, uh, volume checks. You feeling good, everybody?

02:14:40 --> 02:14:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Alright.

02:14:41 --> 02:14:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Welcome to our session, which is titled…

02:14:47 --> 02:15:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We're all a little loopy after a long, really good day. Global Best Practices on National Anti-Scam Efforts. My name is Kate Griffin. I work with the Aspen Institute's Financial Security Program, and I lead our work on scam prevention.

02:15:04 --> 02:15:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, we have, over the last couple of years, been working here in the United States with a group of, um, both private sector and public sector and nonprofit leaders on, um, what a coordinated national strategy for the United States should look like.

02:15:19 --> 02:15:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and, um, uh, published the results of that effort last year and are now turning towards what it means to implement said national strategy. Uh, and, uh, I have, in this journey, learned a lot, uh, from the people up here, uh, on this stage with me.

02:15:38 --> 02:15:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, and we're actually gonna have sort of a, a dialogue today. Um, uh, I am nominally, nominally the moderator, um, but really we're here to learn from one another, um, in conversation. Uh, so we have, um, uh, representatives up here.

02:15:57 --> 02:16:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, from Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Um, each who have their own unique ways that they have, um, looked at what, uh, what it means to have a coordinated national approach. Uh, we're gonna spend some time kind of dissecting what that is for each of those countries. Uh, what are the lessons we're learning?

02:16:17 --> 02:16:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What's working? What are the challenges? How are we measuring progress? And what are the further things we need to learn from one another in order to make measurable impact or progress in preventing scams?

02:16:32 --> 02:16:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So that's the roadmap we have today for what we want to discuss. I wanted to just sort of very selfishly perhaps kind of lay the fact pattern, if you will, of what's been happening here in the United States.

02:16:47 --> 02:17:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Because we are certainly, one could say, maybe lagging behind your countries and what you've been implementing. I don't know, Jennifer and I have actually probably been on the road together for quite some time, actually, so I understand your hesitation there. But I'll begin the timeline, frankly, from maybe actually over just what's happened in the last year. And so last fall, I will say we published this really.

02:17:16 --> 02:17:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Comprehensive document that laid out everything that both the government and the private sector should be doing here in the United States to combat scams and about the same time a couple of weeks really after we published that and I don't know correlation is not causation and all that we started to see some really interesting movement happening within the US government.

02:17:40 --> 02:17:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The creation of the Southeast Asian Scam Centers Task Force, which you may have heard about already, you'll hear later from one of our government leaders on that effort, really focused on crypto investment scams and those being perpetrated by the scam centers in Southeast Asia.

02:17:58 --> 02:18:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But it was the first time that we saw or one of the first times that we saw that kind of coordinated cross-agency effort among law enforcement, particularly focused on the scams issue. It was really exciting. We also then had a couple of other kind of wins, if you will. Last March, the White House did.

02:18:19 --> 02:18:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: release an executive order requesting government agencies to submit their analysis of what a federal action plan in the United States would look like. We're awaiting word for what that effort has resulted in.

02:18:36 --> 02:18:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, and what further action would be taken, um, based on that, um, analysis.

02:18:41 --> 02:18:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: One thing that we think might have been the result of that is the announcement a couple of weeks ago in a presidential memo on sort of creating an opportunity for the private sector to join forces with the government in more information sharing and data sharing.

02:18:58 --> 02:19:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, we've seen our regulators start to step in, uh, more forcefully. Uh, the Federal Communications Commission has been, uh, implementing some, uh, a number of rulemaking efforts that would, um, require telecommunications companies to.

02:19:14 --> 02:19:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: do more know-your-customer obligations and some other ways to step up defensive mechanisms within our telecommunications industry. And the financial regulators, similarly, have been sending out a lot of requests for information and are kind of gathering up to.

02:19:30 --> 02:19:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: provide more regulatory clarity to our financial institutions. All that is our executive branch, and for the lawmakers in Congress, there has been a flurry of activity. My team has counted, I think.

02:19:46 --> 02:20:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Oh, I'm sorry. Can you hear me when I talk to them? We're so sorry. We're getting used to this whole thing. Our legislative team has counted some 30 different bills that have been introduced in this Congress, this congressional session alone. I think we've seen probably another dozen to 15 in draft.

02:20:03 --> 02:20:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, and, um, fully bipartisan efforts. We see that a third of elected officials in Congress have endorsed a bill, um, split half and half between Republicans and Democrats. It is, um, one of the most bipartisan issues of our time.

02:20:18 --> 02:20:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and so that's… to me, there's a lot of momentum happening. Um, it is exciting. It looks a lot different than, I think, some of the things that each of you are experiencing. Um, and one of those things, in my opinion, um, is this issue of sort of coordinated and comprehensive.

02:20:38 --> 02:20:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, I, I think, um, I described it to somebody earlier today, if, if you are someone who watches American football as a lot of 5-yard gains, um, and that may be the way that we do it, I don't know. It may be the way that works for our system, um, but that's, that's, uh, a lot of what's been happening here.

02:20:56 --> 02:21:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And so I'm really interested to understand then.

02:21:01 --> 02:21:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: As we look at the ways countries are saying, this is what works for our country, our system of laws, our culture even, our political systems, what does that mean in terms of what's happening for citizens in their own countries?

02:21:16 --> 02:21:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: what's happening for the ability for the private sector to act in those countries, and what that means in terms of, then, the global fight that we are in. So, that was just some table stakes of, because we're here in the United States, what's happening here.

02:21:32 --> 02:21:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, but I also, you know, selfishly am really looking for your advice and your lessons learned, uh, as you think about that. So, enough from me.

02:21:42 --> 02:22:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I want to go down the line first and really give you an opportunity, each of you, to tell us who you are and also give us just sort of like the one minute or two minutes of what is the state of national strategy in your country?

02:22:04 --> 02:22:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: um, kind of give us the, the, um, plate on which we're gonna have this, this meal today. Andre, why don't you go first? Sure. Hi, I'm Andre. Um, I am part of a products team called the GovTech Anti-Scam Products Team. Uh, we help law enforcement, uh, build products to detect, deter, and disrupt scams at scale.

02:22:23 --> 02:22:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So that, you know, we can fight tech with tech.

02:22:28 --> 02:22:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, um, so I go into explaining where we are… Tell us, just, like, give us, sort of, what's the… Singapore has a national strategy? I see, yes. Tell us what's happening there. Right, sure. So, Singapore does have.

02:22:40 --> 02:22:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: a national strategy. In fact, I think the important part about this is the recognition that.

02:22:46 --> 02:22:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the problem about scams is one that requires a whole-of-society approach, not just the whole of government, but the whole of society. So…

02:22:56 --> 02:23:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: this is one problem that requires government intervention, um, industry collaboration. I'm not, um, not just talking about the financial sector, we are talking about digital platforms, telecommunications, so on and so forth.

02:23:08 --> 02:23:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And then finally, the citizens vigilance. So we need that. And I think for us, our scam losses peaked at about 1.1 billion. I know in the bigger scheme, Singapore is a small country with about 5 to 6 million people. So let's set some context. That's a big number for a small population. Yes. And it is a key issue for us because I think…

02:23:30 --> 02:23:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Well, the number is, in the bigger scheme of things, not significantly huge, but the kind of effects it has on the individual.

02:23:40 --> 02:23:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: is profound, and I think the government sees that as a huge issue for the citizens in Singapore.

02:23:48 --> 02:24:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It has gotten the attention from the top, all the way to the top. So, we have actually set up an inter-ministerial committee that oversees policy formulation and the implementation of anything related to scams. So, in a way, we get a pretty coordinated…

02:24:05 --> 02:24:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: approach for this, simply because I think we are a small country. And this is chaired by the minister, so it gets the attention from the highest levels of government. So that's where we are at now.

02:24:19 --> 02:24:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you. All right. Fran, you're going to kick off from the having a minister approach, but tell us what's happening in the United States, in the United Kingdom. No, thank you. So I'm Fran Dowling. I'm the head of UK Fraud Policy, and that is led out of the Home Office.

02:24:35 --> 02:24:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, in the UK. Um, and I think we've been on a bit of a journey. I think it's fair to say that the UK was one of the hardest hit countries early. Um, we, uh, have a very, um, online sort of banking system, and also the English language meant that we were hit quite hard first.

02:24:54 --> 02:25:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So actually, our first government strategy was back in 2024, and that did a lot of the basics. So, uh, uh, hired, uh, 400 dedicated fraud investigators, um, so what we're sort of describing is a real step change in what we see. Um, and we've also got big things like the, uh.

02:25:12 --> 02:25:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Online Safety Act, which has particular duties that it puts on certain platforms. We've also got quite strong regulations, so there's a reimbursement mechanism, which means that the victims are often able to be fully reimbursed by their banks. And that has, you know, changed the incentives around what the banking sector would quite like to do to stop fraud.

02:25:34 --> 02:25:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, we've sort of got that background, and what we did in March of this year is we launched the next strategy for the next three years. And as Kate mentioned, we have a dedicated minister, which is quite useful to hold our feet to the fire, because they are on the hook politically, and they.

02:25:50 --> 02:26:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: make it known that we're on the hook, therefore, to deliver. Anyway, that strategy's got, kind of, three important parts to it. And it's a bit like, if you, kind of, imagine the, kind of, funnel effect that was described earlier from Gasser. So you've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of scam attempts happening all the time.

02:26:09 --> 02:26:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think it's, uh, now the… it's 47% of all crime in the UK is fraud. And then that number goes up when you add in cyber-related crimes and things like ransomware, so it's huge. So anyway, so the first part of our strategy is around trying to, uh, stop the number of attacks that are making it through.

02:26:27 --> 02:26:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, so there's some, some big things in that, and I'll talk about the Online Crime center a little bit. Um, the second, uh, bit is about, uh, kind of resilience. So what are we doing, uh, about kind of strengthening both businesses and individuals, um, their understanding of what a fraud looks like?

02:26:44 --> 02:26:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And then the third part is that some of these things are definitely getting through and are going to get through. So what are we doing about victim support and what are we doing about law enforcement to go after the things? But I'll probably call out one thing from that strategy which talks to some of the themes that we've been having.

02:26:59 --> 02:27:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Which is, uh, the biggest part of that strategy, with the most new money thrown at it, is this, um, thing called the Online Crime Center, which, uh, was, uh, launched in April, but has been having a sort of a pilot approach before then.

02:27:12 --> 02:27:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And it really is our coordination between industry and the public sector because we've all got those different bits of the puzzle. So what it's doing is a couple of major things. So one, we're looking to scale up how much data we're sharing at scale.

02:27:27 --> 02:27:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So that is, it's in the alpha stage of the tech development at the moment. We'll move to beta. And what we're doing at the moment is we're sharing packages of data via things like the Global Signal Exchange, but also via other amalgamators, which are then going out to companies, which are then looking at that data, telling us if it's rubbish or if it's useful.

02:27:47 --> 02:28:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and feeding back to us, and we've already seen our first arrests as a result of the, you know, even just the pilot stage, which is fantastic. Uh, we've seen a lot of stopping and blocking, we've had some really good feedback from partners to say this, you know, the data's really valuable, let's do more of it, so…

02:28:05 --> 02:28:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think I'll stop there, but it's great. So, congratulations, that's, I mean, that's a lot to be proud of. Well, 47% of all crime, I'm not feeling particularly proud at the moment, but yeah. I understand, I understand, but I think there's also a number of folks here that are salivating at that. Yep, absolutely. Yep, right, which, Jennifer, I think this really, like, really nicely comes over to you in terms of the place where you sit in this ecosystem and this idea that you've got in the UK, this platform.

02:28:32 --> 02:28:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: For the public-private data sharing piece, tell us what you do, Jennifer. So, uh, first off.

02:28:41 --> 02:28:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I want it all.

02:28:44 --> 02:28:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And same.

02:28:46 --> 02:29:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, I have the privilege of running the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange and the Canadian Anti-Scam Coalition. We are private sector, we are not government. Uh, which means we are designed by and for the private sector to share information.

02:29:03 --> 02:29:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: In a way that will help all of us to stop, to block.

02:29:08 --> 02:29:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to build resilience, uh, in our own organizations, and in our supply chains, and our customers. So, a fairly large remit. But I'd actually like to go back a step, if I may, Kate, and take an extra minute here.

02:29:23 --> 02:29:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Because the reason the Canadian Anti-Scam Coalition exists, in fact, has a lot to do with the two people beside me.

02:29:32 --> 02:29:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, two years ago, the Canadian Bankers Association saw what was happening in Singapore and in the UK.

02:29:42 --> 02:29:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and said, that's an interesting idea. And they convened a round table of.

02:29:49 --> 02:29:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Financial institutions, regulators, government, law enforcement.

02:29:54 --> 02:29:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Telcos and I'm missing a couple.

02:29:59 --> 02:30:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: platforms, the whole kit and caboodle of the scam life cycle. To talk about, can we work together?

02:30:07 --> 02:30:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So we worked together over the course of the next year, and on a voluntary basis, the private sector.

02:30:16 --> 02:30:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Created a national advertising campaign that has.

02:30:21 --> 02:30:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: hit not only all its KPIs, but knocked them out of the park.

02:30:25 --> 02:30:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, in terms of its reach. Entirely funded by the private sector.

02:30:30 --> 02:30:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Targeting the consumers.

02:30:32 --> 02:30:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: With a very simple message.

02:30:34 --> 02:30:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Stop.

02:30:36 --> 02:30:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Check.

02:30:37 --> 02:30:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Talk.

02:30:38 --> 02:30:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Right? Very similar. Um…

02:30:42 --> 02:30:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What that did…

02:30:44 --> 02:30:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Was it got a group of organizations representing multiple sectors working together on something that is actionable.

02:30:56 --> 02:31:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Which then led to more conversations.

02:31:00 --> 02:31:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, as a result of that, we are now putting together, we have a pilot in process between banks and telcos, sharing data.

02:31:14 --> 02:31:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And as a pilot, it was staled data, but we're actually going into production on the 15th of September, um, with Live, uh, looking at a particular slice of fraud. And if we have a telephone number.

02:31:29 --> 02:31:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and we have a known date of a fraud, what information do we have? And the correlations we found were unbelievable.

02:31:37 --> 02:31:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: One bank, one telco, we had a 5% match.

02:31:41 --> 02:31:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: On a 90-day slice.

02:31:43 --> 02:31:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You add a second bank.

02:31:47 --> 02:31:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It's a multiplier of 4.4.

02:31:50 --> 02:31:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We added a third bank, and we went up to a multiplier of 6.

02:31:55 --> 02:32:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So it got kind of fun. And in fact, we were able to drill into the data to look at.

02:32:03 --> 02:32:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What can we learn from it? It's great, data's great. What are we learning? And we saw distinct patterns of activity based on the institution. So different behaviors in different institutions.

02:32:17 --> 02:32:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Stay tuned. There'll be announcements in September and October. Okay. Good. So this is where the private sector is. That's where the private sector is. Now, concurrent… Tell us where government is. Concurrent activity.

02:32:29 --> 02:32:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We did not create a strategy and then pitch it to government. We just started doing our own thing, with government involved, but concurrently.

02:32:38 --> 02:32:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Our law enforcement put together an exercise for banks, telcos, platforms, and a whole bunch of others, technology groups, uh, where it was a takedown exercise over 5 days.

02:32:52 --> 02:32:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: 3,000 frauds were interrupted.

02:32:55 --> 02:33:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Sorry, 8… no, that's not… I got that wrong. 1,600 frauds were interrupted, representing 3,000 victims… in 5 days.

02:33:08 --> 02:33:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So that's happening over here. I've got my group working over here.

02:33:14 --> 02:33:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And then we had the federal government also building a national anti-fraud strategy.

02:33:19 --> 02:33:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And we're all working together.

02:33:23 --> 02:33:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Right, so we helped to inform the National Anti-Fraud Strategy. And the National Anti-Fraud Strategy is still in draft mode, but I think it's probably going to be semi-public, um, before December, which is moving faster than the usual speed of government.

02:33:39 --> 02:33:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Unlike most strategies, it involves, I believe it is, 12 government departments working together.

02:33:47 --> 02:33:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It involves the departments that regulate telcos, that regulate platforms, that regulate, uh, law enforcement.

02:33:54 --> 02:34:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We have five pieces of legislation before our House of Commons, which in the Canadian terms is huge.

02:34:02 --> 02:34:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that impact our ability to fight scams and fraud, right? We have privacy… changes to our privacy legislation. We have changes to the Financial Act. We have changes, uh, being made. A bill introduced.

02:34:17 --> 02:34:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: similar to yours, online harms. We have our Justice Department currently looking at what criminal reform needs to be made to enable better prosecution. So…

02:34:32 --> 02:34:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: In all my years, I have never seen this many moving pieces.

02:34:39 --> 02:34:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that will impact one issue.

02:34:44 --> 02:34:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But I'd really love to have a minister.

02:34:47 --> 02:35:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Well, that's where I want to kind of maybe pick back up with the both of you, right? So, maybe it's a North American thing, the fragmented approach, lots of people trying different things at once, but I wanted to kind of hear a little bit more about how you arrive at a place that is, let's have a minister?

02:35:05 --> 02:35:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and, um, what… what that has meant in terms of your abilities to coordinate across different agencies? Like, do you have as many different, kind of.

02:35:17 --> 02:35:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: fingers in the pie, if you will, um, and if there are challenges to having that sort of level of, um, uh, level of person sort of looking at everything. I don't know. What do you want to start? Do you want to start there, Fran?

02:35:32 --> 02:35:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, yeah, no, happy to start. So, um, uh, as you know, we have a dedicated fraud minister, so that's been hugely helpful for us for our access, because his focus is very heavily on fraud. If anything, we have to kind of rein him back a bit.

02:35:48 --> 02:36:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Because he was kind of like, oh, so you're off to San Francisco. Do I need to be there? We're like, no, it's not actually a ministerial event. This is this is this is not something you need to do. You're very welcome. But what does it do? It gives us it gives us the ability to direct lots of the other departments because we're doing it at a ministerial level.

02:36:06 --> 02:36:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: He's very, very focused on public private coordination and partnership. So our fraud strategy was developed. I think we had something incredible. Actually, you might be able to tell me like, was it like a thousand submissions from the private sector of things that they thought that we should include and victims groups and others.

02:36:26 --> 02:36:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So it's hugely collaborative. Um, what are the downsides? I suppose, uh, the difficulty sometimes can be that it's felt that it's alright, uh, Lord Hanson, the Minister for Fraud, uh, is dealing with that, you know, other people don't need to, but I would say that, uh.

02:36:42 --> 02:36:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It's.

02:36:44 --> 02:37:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the stats are not great. And one thing we have done is been, uh, really kind of monitoring as much as we can, and getting better and better data. And, if anything, so, the individual experience was understood fairly well, but now the impact on business is becoming clear.

02:37:01 --> 02:37:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And fraud is having a really significant freezing effect on new businesses. People in the UK do not trust a new company that sets up a website. They don't trust that website. They don't trust that business. So the impact is far broader than just crime.

02:37:17 --> 02:37:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: There's the impact on the economy overall, and then when you start looking at some of these enabling functions and the cybercrime elements and the ransomware, it really is a national security threat, because of the ability of fraudsters to do all sorts of, kind of.

02:37:34 --> 02:37:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, broad-ranging damage, if they like, to our, you know, economy and system. So, well, one thing I would say is, even though we have a fraud minister, last week, it was our Home Secretary who, uh, uh, was championing fraud and taking that forward, and I fully expect.

02:37:49 --> 02:38:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, as we go into next year, that it will be all the way up to leader level, so prime ministerial level. So that's important to us, too. Yeah, I just wanted to stay with you a little bit to pick on something a little bit, or scratch on something, which is, so you have the minister, you sit it within the Home Office.

02:38:08 --> 02:38:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What does that look like in terms of then coordinating across some of the other agencies, other sort of… Yeah. Yeah. So, um, uh, I've got some National Crime Agency colleagues here, but actually they, uh, you know, are independent, but they're directed by the Home Office, so that helps that the law enforcement angle is.

02:38:26 --> 02:38:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: directed from the Home Office, uh, but, um, our Minister is quite collaborative, so we have something called, and there might be some members here, something called the Joint Fraud Task Force, which is with the, um, Lord Hanson, who's from the Home Office, it's from… with a Treasury Minister.

02:38:42 --> 02:38:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And also it's whichever ministers currently in charge of online harms. And the three of them come together with industry quarterly to discuss our fraud strategy developments and issues that other people are seeing and what we are going to focus on and target.

02:38:57 --> 02:39:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So we haven't been battling against other ministries, actually, because this is one area where nobody is a fan of fraud, which is quite helpful. It is quite helpful to have a common enemy. So it sounds like there is a sort of an administrative process that actually helps.

02:39:13 --> 02:39:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to sort of bring that coordination together. Andre, I'm really fascinated by this notion that as a government agency that's focused on, as I understand it, what are the technology implications or implementations across government?

02:39:28 --> 02:39:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You sit in a place where you get to, um, spend time with different agencies, and you actually see what is the advantage of having a minister? How do each of those agencies, as you go in to supplement or bring them the technological innovations they need to implement that vision.

02:39:47 --> 02:40:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I just, I'm curious about your perspective here about the role of having kind of a ministerial sort of top-down approach, and what that means for your ability to go and implement the products and solutions that you can bring to them.

02:40:03 --> 02:40:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Right, so I think having a clear, top-down approach, um, gives us the ability to implement fast. I think sometimes, um.

02:40:14 --> 02:40:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We.

02:40:17 --> 02:40:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We dwell too much on, you know, certain uncertainties and time is wasted. And I think for us in Singapore, I think… I'm not too sure if it's still true, but every day we delay is about $1 or $2 million lost from our citizens.

02:40:32 --> 02:40:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, so, yeah, and I think, so GovTech is quite interesting agency. So we, the way we.

02:40:42 --> 02:40:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: we contribute in this fight against scams are in three ways, right? Like, so we build solutions to implement policies. So one of the policies that we've recently implemented was to limit the number of SIM card registration an individual can have.

02:40:58 --> 02:41:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So the limit that we put on every individual is 10.

02:41:02 --> 02:41:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: for…

02:41:04 --> 02:41:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: for post-paid SIM cards. So…

02:41:06 --> 02:41:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: what we did was, GovTech's role was probably to implement the solutions, the technical solutions, so that the telcos can enforce or can cap it across.

02:41:18 --> 02:41:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: uh, all 14, sorry, the, the government can, can then execute this across all 14 telcos. And individuals, uh, uh, will be able to track.

02:41:26 --> 02:41:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: um, at any point in time, how many SIM cards they have with each telco. Um…

02:41:32 --> 02:41:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The other thing that GovTech does is we help law enforcement scale up their, um, their operations. So, as I shared earlier in the panel, GovTech is, uh, one that helps the law enforcement scan about.

02:41:45 --> 02:41:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: 500,000 websites a day, and we block about… somewhere between 400 to 1,000 websites a day. So…

02:41:54 --> 02:42:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: we analyze, and then we, in the end, uh, in, uh, at the end of the day, we still disrupt, uh, this, this website. So, this kind of scale would never have been, um.

02:42:04 --> 02:42:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: possible with just humans sending emails to each other and stuff like that. So that's where we come in. And then the other one, which is interesting of late is we have to unlock the data that the government has, not just from.

02:42:19 --> 02:42:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, the government agencies that, um, in their course of, um.

02:42:24 --> 02:42:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: operating that they collect, but we also merge them with, um, tip-offs from the citizens. So we have this app called ScamShield.

02:42:32 --> 02:42:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, that the citizens use to report. It has over a million downloads across iOS and Android today. And what we found was that it has been an invaluable source of information for us to see how the scams are trending.

02:42:47 --> 02:43:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Sorry, that's a million downloads out of 5 million citizens. Yes, correct. Dang. It took us years to get there, to be fair. Okay, I feel better. And I think that allows us to then merge the data.

02:43:03 --> 02:43:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Once we have, like, almost real-time, um, visibility of what's happening in the population within the country, we can then, um, merge it with maybe past police reports to know how effective certain crime trends are.

02:43:16 --> 02:43:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I think that sort of unlocking of insights helps to…

02:43:23 --> 02:43:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, helps the country fight scans better, I guess, yeah. Yeah, I'm curious for each of you.

02:43:30 --> 02:43:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: One of the things that we've talked about here in the United States is there's government action, and there's government action that actually empowers the private sector to take the actions they need to take from a prevention standpoint.

02:43:44 --> 02:44:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and that can take many forms, right? We talk about carrot versus stick, right? We talk about, right, these are, these are real trade-offs. Or, or enabling. Right. Legislation changes that enable as opposed to prohibit or preclude. Right? There's, there's regulatory clarity versus guidance versus compliance, right? There are all these things. But I'm curious for each of you, sort of how you would characterize.

02:44:07 --> 02:44:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the ways that the approach that governments have taken to date is catalyzing or empowering private sector prevention actions.

02:44:18 --> 02:44:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And, you know, and whether or not that's different across different sectors, if you will, across telco, technology, financial services.

02:44:28 --> 02:44:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thoughts on that?

02:44:29 --> 02:44:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Shall I go first then? So I find it fascinating as well. It really does differ by sector, but the approach we've tended to take in the UK because we do not know how best to do things unless it's also been discussed and generally in collaboration with the private sector.

02:44:46 --> 02:45:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: is that often things have started out on a very, sort of, voluntary basis, and then we move in the UK to charters. So, for example, we've got a really good telco charter that's currently in place, and what that was was promises and commitments from the.

02:45:04 --> 02:45:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: telecommunications companies about certain things that they would put in place. So it might be about retaining data, it might be about enabling law enforcement to track phone numbers, it might be around SIM card registration and how soon they'll act.

02:45:19 --> 02:45:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But as part of that, so they then sort of set up those charters, and then the final step, obviously, is if we, you know, move to something that's more regulatory, where we insist on a repayment mechanism or something along those lines. But what I would say is that it really is industry-driven, and the collaboration.

02:45:35 --> 02:45:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And the work that we do with the private sector is so key. So, for example, with that telecoms fraud charter, which has got buy-in from the biggest telecommunications company, they are putting their money where their mouth is. They're investing in things. And they may well turn to us. I wouldn't be surprised if they came back to us in six months and said, hey, listen.

02:45:53 --> 02:46:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You know, four of the six companies that agreed to do this, or eight of the 12, have really invested. The other four are lagging behind. Can you add a bit of stick to this? So, you know, and that might be a, you know, a conversation.

02:46:09 --> 02:46:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: with our handy fraud minister, just to sort of say, we've noticed this, and we're monitoring it, and we're not delighted. But you could also see that, um, with enough pressure from the sector, we might well move to regulation. Um…

02:46:21 --> 02:46:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That's interesting. I just want to say, like, Singapore…

02:46:24 --> 02:46:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: mirrors a lot of this approach as well. Uh, we try to approach these, uh, companies, private companies, um, uh, with certain suggestions, sometimes, um, experiments. Like, we are not clear ourselves sometimes, we want to try something out. Um, and it's a bit of a consultative approach before we use.

02:46:43 --> 02:46:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the legal levers as almost a last resort also.

02:46:48 --> 02:47:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, so we in Canada have, uh, an incredibly heavily regulated financial services sector, uh, I mean really heavily, and heavily regulated telcos.

02:47:01 --> 02:47:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Now think of two silos.

02:47:04 --> 02:47:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thousands of miles apart.

02:47:06 --> 02:47:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Within each silo.

02:47:09 --> 02:47:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: There are regulations from the regulator that enable them to share information.

02:47:15 --> 02:47:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to prevent crime. Mm-hmm.

02:47:19 --> 02:47:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Within each silo.

02:47:22 --> 02:47:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What we are trying to do now, through the National Anti-Fraud Strategy, the development of the government strategy.

02:47:28 --> 02:47:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: is enable the sharing across the sectors.

02:47:33 --> 02:47:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Because, as we all know, information in one sector doesn't help anybody. Um, but there are regulations in place.

02:47:41 --> 02:47:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that make it very difficult. There's privacy law in place that makes it very difficult, so we are…

02:47:48 --> 02:47:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We're trying as a private sector.

02:47:52 --> 02:47:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We are pushing the government to enable and make these changes.

02:47:57 --> 02:48:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But we're also doing a little bit of.

02:48:02 --> 02:48:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Just don't tell anyone what we're doing.

02:48:05 --> 02:48:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Because there are also exceptions to most of these rules. If you go to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who is the top dog in this stuff.

02:48:13 --> 02:48:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: He will tell you, and he said it publicly several times, there are no rules.

02:48:18 --> 02:48:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That precludes you being able to share information for the prevention of a crime.

02:48:24 --> 02:48:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, leveraging that public statement of his, we're sort of starting to share, but we have…

02:48:32 --> 02:48:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: challenges. We don't even have safe harbor legislation.

02:48:37 --> 02:48:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, which is crazy. Um, so we're working through that on the private sector side, but the private sector is also.

02:48:47 --> 02:49:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: making a concerted effort to work with all of the government agencies in all of these pieces of legislation and the overarching national anti-fraud strategy to make these changes. It feels like we're all…

02:49:01 --> 02:49:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Trying to get to the start line? Yeah.

02:49:04 --> 02:49:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So that we can go.

02:49:06 --> 02:49:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Sounds about right. We're going to turn it over to you all in just a second, too, just so you know you don't have to sit and listen to your questions and your comments and your own experiences from your countries. We're eager to hear those as well. One of the other things, though, that's on my mind about all of this is, um…

02:49:23 --> 02:49:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What, if anything, changes for the victim?

02:49:26 --> 02:49:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And, you know, as we think about, obviously, what a terrible crime this is, the impact that it has on individuals, on families, increasingly on small businesses, what are you tracking?

02:49:41 --> 02:49:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, what has been put in place in terms of victim support as a result of having this? Like, what is the… what is really the impact when it comes to the… not just the reduction of this crime, but sort of when it does happen, what's different for the victim at the end of the day, because you've…

02:49:58 --> 02:50:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: invested in these government strategies.

02:50:01 --> 02:50:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: No, thank you. And I think that's so key and something that I feel sometimes when we're talking about the numbers that it kind of implies or the data sharing that we're not focusing on the victim side, but that is absolutely the driver.

02:50:18 --> 02:50:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So there are a few things in the UK. So firstly, we've really invested in improving in our reporting function. I'll be frank, when we first set up something called Action Fraud, where we wanted victims to report in if they'd been a victim, we totally underestimated.

02:50:34 --> 02:50:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the number of frauds that were going on. We had no idea about the scale, so the system was completely overwhelmed. So a new system was launched in January called Report Fraud, and as part of that, it also includes referral mechanisms for victims so that they can gain other support.

02:50:49 --> 02:51:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And there's also support within private sector companies as well. But we are about to start consulting on something called the Fraud Victims Charter so that we can agree that every a certain minimum standard for every victim. So things that they can expect.

02:51:05 --> 02:51:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and gain. I think also our policies are really driven by the experiences that are reported into us from fraud victims about what's happened. And so the minister spends quite a considerable amount of time going around and speaking to victim groups and speaking to practitioners who support victims.

02:51:26 --> 02:51:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to identify, you know, what's going on. And so there's some really nasty things that I think we'll all see. The re-victimization that we see a lot. And, you know, it comes through in letters and things where people are again targeted from other companies offering them support or to get their money back.

02:51:42 --> 02:51:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and so that's another part of our, uh, revitalized report fraud, which is to identify those who are likely to be re-victimized, and target support, uh, at them. But it's, um, it's a huge problem. Yeah, no, I'm really, I'm…

02:51:57 --> 02:52:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I'm glad to hear that. And certainly I think the idea that you have someone with the power and status of a lord spending that time with victims is really important. What about for your Singapore?

02:52:13 --> 02:52:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: two forms. One is a police report they lodged after the crime has happened, and the other one's a tip-off. I'll start with the police reporting first. So, Singapore's quite unique in the sense we have quite a high degree of trust by our citizens in the institutions.

02:52:29 --> 02:52:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And we don't typically have a problem reporting. And in our messaging, we try to keep it simple for the citizens.

02:52:39 --> 02:52:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: there's only one place to report. And there's… you go to police, it's a website, or you go to a police station, this data has been consolidated, eventually, at the back end. Um, and… and, um…

02:52:51 --> 02:53:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: processed almost immediately. There are some under-reporting, meaning when a crime happens, sometimes like when a scam happens, people don't report out of embarrassment. But that is really low in Singapore.

02:53:07 --> 02:53:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, we do have data that we collect from these police reports that gives us, in a way, a robust foundation to get some sense of how the shape and size of the problem. And the other thing is, back to the scam shell app that I spoke about.

02:53:23 --> 02:53:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Like.

02:53:26 --> 02:53:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Not everything has to be a police report. Sometimes if I see something, I just report it so that there will not be potentially other victims. So what happens is the moment they report it to us, the Singapore government will analyze that website.

02:53:42 --> 02:53:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And if it's, um, let's say a scam website, what we do is we try to block it. And the median time for response has gone down from 4 hours to 5 minutes now. So there is an app.

02:53:52 --> 02:54:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that, um, you can report up. If it's a scam, a lot of it is done through automated means. We'll scrape the website, we'll send it through our artificial intelligence classifier, and if it's indeed a scam, it gets blocked in minutes. So…

02:54:06 --> 02:54:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, sometimes, as, uh, what we tell the citizens is that, um, just because you can detect that this message is a scam, doesn't mean the rest of the population, or the vulnerable population.

02:54:19 --> 02:54:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: can identify it correctly. So, still report it, so that you might save someone. So, that is what we have. And then finally, from a measurements perspective, the Singapore government, in a way, is quite transparent in our reporting. We have biennial reports on.

02:54:34 --> 02:54:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the scam trends. So like we've carved out in the past, it used to be scams and scams and physical crime used to be reported together. But I think after 2023, we have separate reports just for scam.

02:54:49 --> 02:55:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And, uh, we, we, we dive quite deeply and comprehensively into the breakdown of the different kind of, uh, modus operandi, the victimization, uh, sorry, the victim demographic, um, and then also…

02:55:02 --> 02:55:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the kind of measures that we'll be taking in future. So we do explain, you know, what kind of further measures that the citizens can look forward to, some plans, and also some evaluation of how effective certain controls that we've implemented.

02:55:21 --> 02:55:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Jennifer, I know you guys are a little earlier in the journey, but what do you anticipate? We are. We have the added challenge of a — I think the word is federated, but I might use the word fractured — police system in Canada.

02:55:36 --> 02:55:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: um, police… we have a national policing service, but then we also have provincial policing services, and we have local policing services. And as you can imagine, they don't all always speak to each other at the same time in the same languages.

02:55:50 --> 02:55:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So we have a challenge. For example, the challenge is we don't know the numbers.

02:55:58 --> 02:56:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: none of us know the numbers. We all say that between 5 and 10% are reported. You resemble that remark. Okay, but in Canada, it's a bigger challenge. You've probably got the same problem. Yeah, never mind. You want to face off about that? Um, our federal system, the.

02:56:14 --> 02:56:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: RCMP will tell you that in 2025, Canadians lost $730 million to scams. Okay. That number does not include the numbers from the Toronto Police Services, which is our largest city.

02:56:27 --> 02:56:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And that number is $330 million.

02:56:31 --> 02:56:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Carry the one. That's more than a billion dollars right there, and we're still saying it's only between 5 and 10%, but we don't know even the numbers based on reports.

02:56:44 --> 02:57:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And I think that's where it starts. And we now do have a nationalized reporting system that is slowly being rolled out and introduced. And I look forward to getting some kind of consolidated national reporting.

02:57:01 --> 02:57:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Report.

02:57:03 --> 02:57:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Well, and I think that's an important distinction here, too, is that there's a value and a purpose to creating reporting portals, right? So you can know what the reported data is. And there's also a value and a purpose to survey data and things that help you get a national pulse that maybe captures even the things that are not reported. They have different purposes and approaches.

02:57:26 --> 02:57:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, I've heard a lot of really interesting tidbits that I would take away in terms of, um, what's right, or, um, things… how to sort of frame what's happening in the United States.

02:57:37 --> 02:57:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I will ask you at the end for any last advice you might have, uh, for…

02:57:42 --> 02:57:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: for America these days, but I'm curious, what… first, you know, if there's a country experience in the audience that you would like to voice and tell us more about, I'm really curious to hear it. There's somebody in the back, I'm gonna run a mic to you. And then, otherwise, what questions do you also have?

02:57:59 --> 02:58:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: See? I wore my running shoes for a reason.

02:58:05 --> 02:58:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: A question and a country experience. It's a question and a country experience. Great, good, go for it. Okay, so my question is for all three. We can't hear you. We need headphones.

02:58:17 --> 02:58:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Just come closer.

02:58:20 --> 02:58:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Okay.

02:58:22 --> 02:58:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Tiny bubbles. I think that worked.

02:58:24 --> 02:58:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Can you hear me now?

02:58:26 --> 02:58:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Oh, I see. I got it. All right. So my question is for all three panelists about the American experience. In the United States, we have a single reporting portal for online crime called the Internet Crime Complaint Center.

02:58:42 --> 02:58:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: When a victim goes to file a complaint, the first thing they see is an acknowledgement button. It says, I acknowledge.

02:58:49 --> 02:58:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That investigation of this complaint is discretionary, and you will not be advised.

02:58:55 --> 02:58:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Whether or not your complaint is being investigated.

02:58:57 --> 02:59:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And they can't file a report until they click I acknowledge.

02:59:02 --> 02:59:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Is that something you would advise your American counterparts might not be conducive to reporting? I'm not even getting into the Gallup data.

02:59:13 --> 02:59:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thoughts about that? Um, so I have a thought about, um, our, um, enhanced report function, uh, that we've done through something called Report Fraud, where, um, uh, so in…

02:59:27 --> 02:59:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So within that, you do get a response. But unfortunately, because we really updated the tech behind it and the analytical capability, the most overwhelming response that victims get once they have spent the best part of 30 minutes or longer, depending on how much information they're uploading, is almost an instantaneous response that says.

02:59:47 --> 03:00:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Unfortunately, your report doesn't reach our prioritization criteria, so it will stay on file and be augmented by other victim reports, but there'll be no further action. And so, um, that is equally, kind of, you know, that's really not…

03:00:02 --> 03:00:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: what somebody needs to hear or a victim wants to hear, and that's to do because we updated the speed too fast about how quickly it responds, but also we need to come back with better messaging to be clearer about what is actually going to happen with the information that they've shared with us. But I can totally see that.

03:00:18 --> 03:00:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that utterly puts people off. I think, for us, it's a real iterative process, and report fraud is all the time picking up on complaints and issues and trying to iterate and improve it. But yeah, I agree with you, that's not very tempting. From a policy perspective, though, so for my teams who are having to respond to letters that come in.

03:00:36 --> 03:00:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to the Minister or to the Home Office, um, that's a fantastic one. That would give us a get-out and mean that we don't have to respond, because often teams are having to sort of trawl through the data to find out what happened to a particular individual's complaint, and go back to them with an update or not, but yeah.

03:00:51 --> 03:00:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thanks. Yeah.

03:00:53 --> 03:01:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Point well taken. Yes, do you want to come up here and grab this mic? Or I can come and grab it to you, but then you guys know how to…

03:01:05 --> 03:01:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Hi. My big concern, I've got 45 years working with victims of crime, since the 1990s, victims of fraud crimes. And I'm curious, you talked a bit about asking about victim services, but I don't think it was covered. It kind of moved into what the police are doing.

03:01:21 --> 03:01:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Could you address other than doing outreach and your minister going out and what what actual work is being done to assist those victims? Do you have dedicated victim support people that are working eight hour shifts, 24 hours a day to respond to people in their homes or by phone? What do you do about those that aren't on the internet?

03:01:41 --> 03:01:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, is there mental health helping, um, legal services, um, you know, other kinds of interventions that are available, and especially with the re-victimization rate, I mean, the victims that I work with, I always say, once you've been a victim of this, you're probably targeted for the rest of your life.

03:01:58 --> 03:02:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: knowing that that might be true, what are we doing for people to cover those kind of circumstances? Thank you. So I'm just going to jump on that very quickly, because it's a short answer. In Canada, we don't have.

03:02:10 --> 03:02:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: of victim services strategy?

03:02:13 --> 03:02:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, we, we… there is no national strategy. Are there services out there? There are independent organizations doing that. There are, uh, private sector organizations that offer some.

03:02:24 --> 03:02:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But there is no national strategy for it.

03:02:31 --> 03:02:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, the only thing I can say is that, um, the police services that take the fraud reports in the province of Ontario and for the National Police, it's one call center, if you will.

03:02:43 --> 03:02:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, they are… a normal shift in that call center is an 8-hour shift. I had the pleasure of spending 2 days with them, um, and then stopped crying about 2 weeks later, um, because the teams that are dedicated to taking.

03:02:59 --> 03:03:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the reports from victims of… who are victims of financial crime?

03:03:04 --> 03:03:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The police officers who take those reports can only work in 3-hour shifts?

03:03:11 --> 03:03:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That's it.

03:03:13 --> 03:03:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: they can't do more, or we lose them too fast. So that's how bad it is at that end. A national…

03:03:20 --> 03:03:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Strategy, we don't have that yet.

03:03:24 --> 03:03:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What about for you all, has an increased investment in victim services been part of the strategy?

03:03:31 --> 03:03:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I think there's a couple of elements to victim support in the UK. So probably the most important actually is the repayment mechanism. So if you if you report to your bank and you've been a victim of fraud, unless you have really gone out of your way.

03:03:47 --> 03:04:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: uh, to sort of circumvent the safeguards, um, you are entitled to be reimbursed, and I think that does help. It's up to a maximum of 80,000 pounds. So, sorry, I'm not sure about the conversion into US dollars, but over 100,000 US dollars. Um, and I think that that does help a bit, but.

03:04:04 --> 03:04:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Also, when you're reporting it, so you don't have to report online, you can phone, there's a phone line. It's not fantastic, I'll be honest, in the sense that, you know, I think still… I've got to remember the numbers, I think it's something like 15% of people give up before they actually get through, so that's… 85% get through, but it's still not great.

03:04:22 --> 03:04:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And there are victim services. So when you're filling out the stuff, you can tick if you want to be contacted or supported. And there are a number of different victim services. There's the ones that are funded via the law enforcement services. So there's a victim support unit. And there are also actually banks and others have sort of dedicated services that they use as well. So there's a referral mechanism.

03:04:42 --> 03:04:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But, uh, none of this is perfect or great, so that's why we are launching the consultation for the victims, the Fraud Victims Charter, so we can understand, you know, what we actually need to have in place.

03:04:55 --> 03:05:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What about in Singapore? I'm sorry, I think I'm out of depth to answer this question. I'm from a technology agency, and I don't want to misrepresent, but I think we do have some support services that comes after.

03:05:09 --> 03:05:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah. The only other thing I would say as well is that we do we have to be super careful as the government. We're not allowed to flag one particular service over another. But there is a service offered in the UK by a private company for a small sum. They will add your name and your details to.

03:05:26 --> 03:05:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: basically a watch list. So there are extra checks performed by the banks and others if you are… if your… if your details are used. But again, you know, that can't be done for everybody, because as soon as you do that, the whole system falls down, so it's… it's… it's limited in number, and it's focused on those who are most vulnerable, so they've had their details stolen, they've had money stolen from them.

03:05:46 --> 03:05:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So we… our banks would also refer you to one of those organizations that will monitor your credit and help look after you. And let me… I mean, I said we don't have a national strategy.

03:05:59 --> 03:06:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The financial institutions may refer you out. Some of the police forces may have stronger victim supports than others.

03:06:08 --> 03:06:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: They may be better set up for it than others. I know the City of Toronto, the Toronto Police Services, they do have a victim support system. I don't think it's as robust as what you described.

03:06:20 --> 03:06:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Well, I want to thank all three of you. I do have the advice question. I will say that right now what I'm sitting with are a couple of sort of things that I've heard from you all. There's a little bit here of go fast to go slow.

03:06:35 --> 03:06:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Or go fast to go far?

03:06:37 --> 03:06:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Or start small to go big? It's the end of a long day. But in terms of, like, I've heard from each of you elements of, well, we started in this way, and we got some wins.

03:06:53 --> 03:07:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And then that started the snowball of momentum. Um, and whether that wa- and- and in particular, where that was in terms of public-private partnership.

03:07:02 --> 03:07:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, I've also heard from, from each of you.

03:07:06 --> 03:07:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, the investment in, sort of, coordinating, um, the private sector with law enforcement, which leads to better responses, or hopefully leads to better responses.

03:07:20 --> 03:07:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and I think this last point was incredibly important, which is, like, I think it's all on our hearts to think about.

03:07:27 --> 03:07:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: not only do we have fewer victims, are we holding ourselves accountable to fewer victims, but are we also holding ourselves to accountability in terms of strengthening victim services, is a question mark. So…

03:07:42 --> 03:07:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: lightning round, what other, um… what other… if you were sitting, uh, in my seat, as a private citizen for a nonprofit trying to urge the United States to take more and more action, whether that's public sector officials and leaders, or the private sector.

03:07:59 --> 03:08:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What should I take away from your experiences?

03:08:02 --> 03:08:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Just go.

03:08:04 --> 03:08:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Just do it. Private sector, governments are making decisions, they're creating strategies, these things are going to take time. The speed of government is, you know, a little slow. Except in Singapore. Except in Singapore. That's not fair.

03:08:20 --> 03:08:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Just start. I urge everyone in the private sector to work across the sectors.

03:08:29 --> 03:08:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Pick up the phone, call somebody in a different industry, and just talk about what you get, what you can share, and what difference it might make, and then do it.

03:08:41 --> 03:08:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Ask permission later. Alright, the Nike approach.

03:08:45 --> 03:08:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you. Great.

03:08:47 --> 03:09:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, so I think my key message would be about, um, it's an incredibly, um, open process. So if you've got an idea or you want to be involved, um, we're really listening. And so part two of that would be, um.

03:09:02 --> 03:09:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think it's really important for companies that there is one framework. So, we must keep talking to each other and understand what we're doing, because it's far better that we design with industry one framework and one approach to cut the costs for businesses, so you're not having to do.

03:09:18 --> 03:09:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Different things in different jurisdictions.

03:09:21 --> 03:09:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So mine would be think big, start small and fail fast. The reason is because a lot of the small success that Singapore has was not due to like particular intelligent policy design or like superior strategy.

03:09:38 --> 03:09:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: A lot of it, we arrived at what worked for us was because we were willing to experiment, we were willing to.

03:09:45 --> 03:09:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: make mistakes in a small way, and then, when things work, we will scale it up. So, I think…

03:09:51 --> 03:09:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Like what Jessica said, um…

03:09:55 --> 03:10:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Start, just start, right, yeah. Okay, what about you? Yeah.

03:10:00 --> 03:10:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What about you from your experience? What's my advice?

03:10:04 --> 03:10:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I mean, I would say that one of the most powerful things we did was, uh, actually to get as many of the leaders, um, that we could around a table to agree on what the problem was.

03:10:16 --> 03:10:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, there was a lot of talking past one another for a long time, and a lot of blaming. Um, and working through that was actually quite a long part of the process. Um, but a shared understanding of what problem you're trying to solve led to better solutioning. So, that's my one nugget that I…

03:10:34 --> 03:10:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: give from our experience.

03:10:36 --> 03:10:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: All right. Please join me in thanking these wonderful leaders.

03:10:52 --> 03:11:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Facilitating the sharing of data and intelligence on fraud across 800 member organizations, including all the retail banks in the UK, challenger banks, card issuers, mobile network operators, and the long chain of other organizations who want to stop fraud.

03:11:08 --> 03:11:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: fraud. So it's a kind of advanced and quite mature data sharing facility, which has been going 38 years in the UK. And it's particularly effective. Last year, it saved around $5 billion for the banking community.

03:11:26 --> 03:11:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: through the sharing in real time of data and intelligence on things like accounts opening fraud, on money mules, on compromised identities, misuse of facility, so account takeovers.

03:11:43 --> 03:11:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The concept is that as soon as one of the members finds a fraud, gets to a certain level of, um.

03:11:50 --> 03:12:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: evidence, they must file that to a database which is then available for everyone else. So, it's a particularly effective scheme, but, and this is where our pain points, so you have an effective scheme, traditional finance, bank sharing information.

03:12:05 --> 03:12:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But at two ends of what I feel the kill chain, we're missing out on data being shared and intelligence being shared. At the outset, where social media companies and fraud largely starts, and then at the exit and the monetization of fraud and scams into the.

03:12:21 --> 03:12:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: cryptocurrency world. And one of the reasons we've come here, or I've come here, is that we want to make connections with the crypto world, because that is one of the pain points we have around the exit money, the traceability of that money, but also the fact.

03:12:37 --> 03:12:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that I believe, and there's anecdotes around this, that sometimes it's in the crypto world they find that a fraud has happened before anyone else. And then they might know where that bank account has been sent from. So I think they need to be part of this community.

03:12:52 --> 03:12:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, three pain points for me. First of all, on mule accounts, and…

03:12:57 --> 03:13:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: mule accounts, the setting up of mule accounts, and how to differentiate between complicit and non-complicit mules. And there are different issues around those. Complicit mules, we share the information. Non-complicit mules, people might be duped, people might be manipulated.

03:13:13 --> 03:13:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: can be exited from the system, and then there's issues of financial exclusion. So trying to balance financial crime prevention and financial exclusion. The second issue we have, I think a pain point, is within the bank, you may understand your customer, their transactions, their history.

03:13:30 --> 03:13:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But you don't, you know very little about the recipient account, the beneficiary account, and having information in real time to be able to assess whether a payment's going out is going to a destination account, which isn't.

03:13:45 --> 03:13:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: is risky, could be controlled by a criminal. Um, and the third element, I think, is.

03:13:51 --> 03:14:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: when the money goes out of the country and it goes to different jurisdictions and what do we know and how can we trace that so within the UK we have quite sophisticated ways of tracking through different hops when money is transferred but then it goes either overseas or into crypto and we just kind of like.

03:14:08 --> 03:14:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That's the end of the story.

03:14:11 --> 03:14:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Great, Mike, thank you. That's really helpful to have it, especially laid out like that. Um, we do have a bonus panelist, Carol House. So, Carol, if you could kind of introduce yourself, say your role, and then a little bit of kind of the pain points that you see, and maybe don't forget to focus on what you think the working group could focus on.

03:14:26 --> 03:14:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Absolutely. Oh, and one other thing. In case you haven't realized, there's a volume button on the side, because mine was super loud. You've got to find the little knob. That's fun. This is a very cool vibe during the silent — has anybody been to a silent disco? Yeah, this is really fun. But hearing myself at the same time is a little unnerving.

03:14:46 --> 03:15:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Anyway, this is such an important topic. I'm really thrilled to talk about where I think the working group can focus because there are some really concrete things that I think that, especially related to interdicting the payments, that there's some fascinating lessons looking at countering cybercrime and countering financial crime.

03:15:03 --> 03:15:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: where each community has started to kind of learn lessons from each other, but that nexus needs to continue to be grown and catalyzed and accelerated. Right now, I'm serving as — I'm doing a bit of a portfolio life, so doing some consulting and board work. But also, I have the privilege of working as the Distinguished Senior Fellow on the ACAMS International Anti-Fraud.

03:15:23 --> 03:15:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and Technology Task Force, where we're working with actually a lot of institutions that are here, including GASA, um, on this great partnership with over 40 members internationally. Um, it's co-chaired by the US and UK Treasuries, um, and we have a couple of government members in, like, Singapore.

03:15:38 --> 03:15:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The UAE, um, Australia and Japan, um, as well as, like I mentioned, the UK. And then we have members of telecom and technology and social media, web hosting, all the way into fintech and banking, as well as crypto community members of this.

03:15:53 --> 03:16:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, and we've been really trying to focus on what are the key force-multiplying efforts that we can drive on trying to better enable combating fraud, um, in this, like, in this global cross-border as well as cross-sector way. Um, and a couple of the things that we've been really pointing at are.

03:16:09 --> 03:16:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Addressing some of these, some of these challenges and where I think actually that this working group could pick up some of it and move forward, um, like we did this project with GASA that I mentioned on stage earlier about information sharing and permissions, right? Like, I'm sure many practitioners in here who has been told, like, I can't share that because of some kind of, some privacy statute, whether it's.

03:16:26 --> 03:16:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: ECPA, TCPA, CP&I requirements, or things related to Bank Secrecy Act disclosures, or cyber info sharing. I'm sure things related to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, just all of these different statutes, the impacts that they have on your ability to share information on fighting fraud.

03:16:44 --> 03:17:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: we published this in partnership with Aiken Gump, a law firm, to be able to provide this publicly for free to institutions so that we could help all these amazing information-sharing groups, at least focusing on the U.S. first as a major hub of a lot of the activity that's happening. We needed to start with one jurisdiction, let's start at a center of gravity like the U.S.

03:17:03 --> 03:17:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So we published that, but we just mapped out some of the legal analysis on what data can be shared, what exists under a safe harbor, where are there exceptions. But there's still a lot of work that needs to be done on other jurisdictions. What are the frameworks that allow for that cross-border sharing?

03:17:19 --> 03:17:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Things like playbooks that can allow for the sharing of certain data and mapping it in cross-jurisdictional frameworks, things like what we have for Privacy Shield but haven't been directly mapped onto the fraud ecosystem and specifically cross-border payments flows. How great could that toolkit be for, let's say, Egmont and the group of financial intelligence units to know, here's what the standard of data elements and fields should be.

03:17:42 --> 03:18:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And here's how to do that in… here's a structured template for what the MLAT, you know, agreement should be looking like. Let's prioritize, you know, the highest value jurisdictions where these things are moving. There's a really, I think, important place where the financial working group could look at mapping those international partnerships and trying to identify what are some of those core.

03:18:01 --> 03:18:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Again, playbook areas that we could be really working at and that work in partnership with things like what the ACAMS International Task Force is doing, again, all in partnership with these great groups. So I think that's a good place. And I know I mentioned data a lot in data fields. I don't know how many other nerds are in here. I'm pretty sure the whole audience here.

03:18:18 --> 03:18:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I came from hard cyber. I don't know if anybody else here came into fighting fraud or financial crime from cyber. That's how I came into it. So we learned about sticks and taxi, which if you don't know that, it's like the language or the standard for how we learned in cyber that when these illicit actors are moving at the speed of the internet.

03:18:36 --> 03:18:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and compromising and getting onto your networks, we needed to be able to share illicit indicators immediately to stop these guys from getting onto our networks. So that's what your security operations center is doing. Like, when it looks like an episode of 24, and you've got all those pictures, windows up, and everything, and what those guys are doing, they're sharing real-time indicators.

03:18:51 --> 03:18:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We don't have that in illicit finance, and we should.

03:18:55 --> 03:19:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And there have been people that have been calling for it for at least a decade, because I worked with a lot of those people, and I was one of those people, and I'm sure plenty of the people in this room are. There's a real opportunity, I think, for identifying. We already have tons of data standards around financial information. Why don't we map that to existing standards that also exist for digital footprint data, highly structured, really usable data?

03:19:13 --> 03:19:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What could that look like for being able to allow for that real time, especially in the world of crypto, when you have cyber money literally moving at the speed of the internet everywhere? What a great opportunity for at least mapping what those fields could look like that could allow for some of that more automated ingestibility of this kind of information.

03:19:31 --> 03:19:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that can support real-time intervention and interjection. So, I think those are some of the key pain points for me. It's addressing that velocity issue, and also with more data standards and structure that allows for better use of federated machine learning and AI to detect bigger networks. I think.

03:19:46 --> 03:20:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: like, that focusing on those core building blocks and modules that become the force multipliers for all the other efforts. If you do that on creating… on mapping that playbook for authorities, and looking at the root cause on issues around data, um, that can unlock the tech capabilities, that's where I would recommend going.

03:20:04 --> 03:20:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Great. Thanks, Carol. So I think that is an interesting point of if we could share the data in a more structured format that would allow more quick analysis and more real-time sharing, definitely. Jason, if you want to introduce yourself and talk a little bit.

03:20:17 --> 03:20:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Absolutely. Thank you, guys. It's a pleasure to be here. Good afternoon. My name is Jason Traeger. I am the head of lawfare at Inca Digital. If you're not familiar with Inca Digital, we are a threat and intelligence provider. Our clients are mainly financial institutions.

03:20:32 --> 03:20:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: crypto exchanges, and the federal government. Lawfare is the practice that I run. We pride ourselves at Inca Digital of taking in data and analysis for our risk and threat intelligence practice and actioning it, figuring out ways to disrupt scam activity.

03:20:48 --> 03:21:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Figuring out a way to use the legal system or use law enforcement, or use our own internal connections and mechanisms to disrupt everything from spoofed websites to scam groups to money laundering organizations before they hit the platform.

03:21:03 --> 03:21:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And so I'm kind of going to pick up on what Carol was talking about, which is not only about information sharing, because she's right, there has to be a structured sense of information sharing between different platforms. One of the big things that I see in my role at Inca Digital, which is more of a unique perspective, is the type of information being gathered by the platforms themselves. I think there's a real lack.

03:21:22 --> 03:21:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: In what type of information?

03:21:24 --> 03:21:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: platforms, exchanges, or banks are actually looking at and gathering. There's a lot of internal looking, how are people accessing the platform? How are they setting up their accounts? What do transactions look like? Where are they going? There's not quite enough looking outwards.

03:21:41 --> 03:21:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And this is a tough thing to do. It often requires you to spend money on vendors or analysts or consultants to kind of look at the landscape of scam activity across the globe and figuring out what is coming to your platform, what is coming to your bank.

03:21:57 --> 03:22:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Who's looking to use you in a way that is illegal or illicit, that's gonna harm your customers, that's gonna harm your brand?

03:22:06 --> 03:22:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That type of information is not only important to gather, it's important to share.

03:22:11 --> 03:22:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Because I see quite a bit of activity that can be thwarted before it ever hits the platform. You know, who's talking in that telegram group about how they're going to wash their funds through your platform? Who's running a scam and talking to people and saying, here, I know an easy place.

03:22:26 --> 03:22:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Where we can get your money to our criminal organization.

03:22:31 --> 03:22:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That stuff's out there if you know where to find it. And it's very imperative that organizations find that information, and then share it, because the same groups are running the same playbooks all the time. We see it constantly, because they figure out a playbook that works, they figure out a plan that works, and then they repeat it over and over again. It's just a matter of when it's going to come to your shores.

03:22:50 --> 03:22:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So what I would like to see is a way to discuss.

03:22:54 --> 03:23:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: What type of activity you are seeing in the scam world and the fraud world and just the illicit activity world that you have seen come to your platform or you have been able to thwart through your security teams, through your FIU, through your special investigations unit?

03:23:09 --> 03:23:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And then share that playbook with other organizations in an effort that they can stop it as well. Because it really does have to be an all-in type of thing to stop this type of activity and stop especially large-scale transnational organized crime institutions.

03:23:27 --> 03:23:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you, Jason. You know, I think that's a really interesting point, because we do see, and we see this in criminal networks in the U.S, where they'll hit one region with one scam that works, and then that slowly tapers out, and then they go to another region, another region, so trying to get ahead of that makes a lot of sense.

03:23:42 --> 03:23:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, it'll be interesting to see if people have ideas on how you can functionally do that type of sharing. So, I'll be curious to have, you know, if people have ideas, we'll definitely want to delve into that. So, uh, Siddharth, I'm not gonna even try and say your last name, I apologize. So, uh, please introduce yourself and, uh, say where you'.

03:23:58 --> 03:24:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Of course. Nice to meet you, everyone. My name's Siddharth. I'm one of the product team members here at Plaid, focused on fraud. Plaid, for those of you who don't know, allows bank linking of your bank account to a number of different apps. We have our Plaid network that currently consists of 12,000 financial institutions.

03:24:16 --> 03:24:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: 9,000 apps, and 1 in 2 Americans who've currently used our platform. And so, when we take a look at our platform, we have a good amount of financial history about a certain user. And when it comes to detecting fraud about that user, we're generally very good at being able to do that. We can say.

03:24:32 --> 03:24:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: this individual does not have the wire funds necessarily for this transfer, or this individual isn't who they claim to be. But all of these things tend to be at the moment of account onboarding, when we're given access to the user's financial history and financial journey, and we're able to actually go in and pull out that information with the consent of the user.

03:24:51 --> 03:25:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think our big focus over the next few years is really able to detect what are the other trigger points for Plaid to be able to actually understand, and these will come from our partners and our customers, and be able to say, I think this transaction is suspicious, and that's where the Plaid network would really be able to pull out information on what is the individual's income.

03:25:10 --> 03:25:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: what is their normal transaction volume or transaction history? And based on that, is this likely to be a fraud lingent, or is this likely to be an actual authentic payment? And I think as we kind of move forward in the world, uh, one of the big areas of Plaid is really how can we actually cover the user across the entire lifecycle?

03:25:29 --> 03:25:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: while continuing to provide a high level of privacy. Candidly, users do not trust financial institutions. All of us are viewed as people who are trying to take their money and not someone who's trying to grow it or protect it. And so in such a world, how can we actually value an individual's privacy?

03:25:44 --> 03:25:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And value their kind of autonomy and get them involved in the process so that they don't feel like this is a user that's trying to or this is a vendor or a bank that's trying to scam me and instead is a bank that's trying to protect me and actually earn that trust from the user.

03:25:59 --> 03:26:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And if we're able to do that, I think Plaid, uh, that's a vision that Plaid really wants to move forward.

03:26:05 --> 03:26:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Great. Well, thank you. So, I do think there are some… some customers do trust their banks to protect them, more than most industries, so I… but I think your point, and we've talked about this in other forum, where having the user be engaged in protecting themselves, that they have to have… they have to be willing to share some information if they really want to have.

03:26:24 --> 03:26:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, the most protection as possible.

03:26:28 --> 03:26:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So from the, from the American banking perspective, you know, what we're really interested in is figuring out how we prevent losses to our customers. So there's a lot of activity in the space in terms of fraud identifiers, information sharing, putting friction into payments. But how do we, once that payment occurs?

03:26:43 --> 03:26:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: occurs, how do we stop that payment? So in the U.S, there's a thing called the Internet Crime Complaint Center that the FBI runs. They receive a million complaints a year. They action less than 0.4% of those complaints. They are under-resourced. They don't have the ability to go after smaller dollar complain.

03:26:58 --> 03:27:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Can we get a feed from those complaints, and can we figure out, on the private sector side, how to make banks that receive those.

03:27:07 --> 03:27:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: potentially fraudulent payments, aware of them, and can they stop them? And so, I don't know if anyone saw, there was an AP News article that just came out today, uh, that talked about… our Fed colleague saw that… um, that came out today that talked about how bad the financial sector is at protecting consumers from fraud and scams. And they had a… they had a great story.

03:27:24 --> 03:27:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Or a great example of where a consumer had notified their bank, and the bank had reached out to a crypto company, and the FBI actually had reached out to them, asked them to hold those funds, and they refused to do it.

03:27:35 --> 03:27:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And so the question is, what do we need as an industry to agree to hold funds? So this isn't necessarily returning the funds. This is to hold the funds so that an investigation can be completed, and then if it is determined to be fraudulent, that those funds could… are available for return.

03:27:50 --> 03:28:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And I think this is something on the banking side, we have a fairly strong and robust process in place for the most part. So this is something ABA is working to standardize. We believe a hold harmless letter along with a law enforcement affidavit under Section Title 18.

03:28:06 --> 03:28:22
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That if the customer gives you that assurance that fraud has occurred, that you are regulatory compliant to hold those funds while an investigation occurs. We think that having that same type of approach for different industries, whether it's notification from payment rail, who's taking the appropriate.

03:28:22 --> 03:28:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: action from the consumer to gather information from the consumer, or whether it's to a crypto exchange, because we think this is the first step. Like, once that money leaves, you have, you know, minutes to hours to hold that. You can't be debating on what do I need from folks to freeze those funds.

03:28:37 --> 03:28:53
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And so this could have a very significant impact. So that's kind of my thought in this space. So what I heard from Mike is things dealing with mule accounts. How do we differentiate between complicit and non-complicit? I think that ties into some of the stuff that we've talked about with some of the other people. I think the sharing of recipient.

03:28:53 --> 03:29:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: account data is a great preventative measure. I know there are formats in the U.S. that do that type of sharing, there's different consortium. I, you know, I know there's projects in place that share that information, I don't know if anyone's heard of Project Ivan on the crypto side of things, uh, where they share that bad beneficiary account data, but that's not…

03:29:10 --> 03:29:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: It's not widespread, and it's not spread internationally. And so the question is, what are the regulatory or legal reasons why we couldn't do that? Because I know there's vendors in the U.S. that have that away account information that they could share with CyFast, CyFast could potentially share with the U.S.

03:29:25 --> 03:29:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I think there's things that we could focus on.

03:29:28 --> 03:29:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Carol, the automatic information sharing, the structured data formats, uh, I think, you know, that gets to that regulatory point of view of what's allowed and what isn't allowed. Uh, and then, Jason, you talked about.

03:29:38 --> 03:29:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the different pieces in terms of… I really like the fact that…

03:29:42 --> 03:29:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: sharing it with others so that they can be aware of that threat going forward. Uh, and then, Siddharth, on the account opening piece, um, I'm curious on how that's going to… you talked about having the user be involved in that. How we're going to…

03:29:56 --> 03:30:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: do that transaction review of history. I think that's what you're looking for, to be more aware, so that you know you can do more of that risk scoring internally to yourself. So those are the ideas from the panelists, from an information working group for GASA, so I think we've got a broad range of things, but now we are going to throw it out to.

03:30:14 --> 03:30:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The audience…

03:30:15 --> 03:30:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: our AV, our intrepid AV guy has microphones there, and so I am curious on anyone else's thoughts, if any of those ideas resonate with you, because remember, this is your working group, this is not meant to be just us talking to you, but we do want to hear from folks, is there anything in this space.

03:30:30 --> 03:30:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And I do know some of you in the audience, and I will call on you directly if I don't get questions from folks on places.

03:30:38 --> 03:30:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So does anyone want to comment on this? Yeah, I'm looking at you, Pooja.

03:30:43 --> 03:30:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So there we go.

03:30:50 --> 03:30:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Thank you so much for putting me on the spot.

03:30:53 --> 03:31:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, so for me, I think what's gonna be important… And why don't you say where you're from? …is also take into consideration the smaller… Tell her she's gone.

03:31:01 --> 03:31:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Oh, sorry. Uh, Pooja Paturi, uh, from the Canadian Bankers Association, and I work with Paul. Maybe a little too much, actually. Um, but for me, what's important for this group to encompass is all of the subsidiaries of financial institutions that have a play.

03:31:17 --> 03:31:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: with consumers. So, things like mortgage brokers, uh, security firms, bringing them all into the picture. I know that crypto is kind of the focus, and that's where we want to identify all the losses.

03:31:29 --> 03:31:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But, um, I think it's also important for us to capture the smaller players that might be getting left behind.

03:31:35 --> 03:31:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Okay, so yeah, a more inclusive approach that it's not just necessarily the banks, but it's also… oh, you gotta put your headphones back on, Pooj.

03:31:43 --> 03:31:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So a more inclusive approach that's not just the banks, but also includes other players in the financial sector. And I think we had a hand raised in the back there, um…

03:31:56 --> 03:32:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Hello, thanks. Uh, Ben Aldershie from the International Monetary Fund. I was just interested on your… this is very strange, actually, with your headphones. Yeah, you can hear yourself speak, it's not the most fun experience. I'll just try and get used to it for a second. Um, I was interested in the example there that you gave about, um.

03:32:12 --> 03:32:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: law enforcement asking a bank to sort of hold the funds before they could go, and then also asking a crypto asset firm, for example, to hold the funds, and they… and they refused, basically. I think one of the things that's worth pointing out, and is really important.

03:32:27 --> 03:32:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: not just at a domestic level, but globally. The Financial Action Task Force, for several years now, since sort of 2018, 2019, has been trying to level the playing field, right?

03:32:39 --> 03:32:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: between the requirements on banks and the requirements on virtual asset service providers, and I think there's been some success there, but still, in certain parts of the world, there is a lag between that level playing field, so I think it's important internationally to make sure.

03:32:56 --> 03:33:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that crypto asset firms do. Um, reach the same level, if you like, in terms of compliance and stuff like that as banks.

03:33:04 --> 03:33:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And then just going back to a previous role from a long time ago that I had, one of the thoughts or one of my observations some time back was this connection between crypto asset firms and financial institutions, traditional financial institutions working together.

03:33:19 --> 03:33:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And that, in many cases, I think previously was kind of, let's say.

03:33:25 --> 03:33:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: less existent, not non-existent, but less existent, and there were some really good examples in, uh, the UK, for example, but other countries of financial institutions working together with law enforcement, so you had things like Jim that… but quite often it was difficult for.

03:33:41 --> 03:33:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: crypto asset firms to be involved in those types of forums, for good reasons in some cases, so size, all of that kind of stuff. I think that's another important thing, that those kind of interactions, from what we've just heard.

03:33:56 --> 03:34:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: are really important in this space as well, particularly when you're talking about the different rails involved and how fraud moves between them.

03:34:03 --> 03:34:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Can I just ask a quick question? How many people here are from a digital asset native company?

03:34:12 --> 03:34:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: One, that's Jared, so maybe like four. I really liked, and I apologize, what you said towards the back half of what you're saying, then I have a little problem with the front portion, the first part, which is bringing.

03:34:28 --> 03:34:39
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: financial institutions and crypto players under the same sort of compliance guidelines. And the problem with that is, not that it's not.

03:34:39 --> 03:34:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: A good idea? Your heart's not in the right places.

03:34:42 --> 03:34:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The non-freezing, the speed.

03:34:45 --> 03:34:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The decentralized nature of it. In that industry, it's a feature. It's not a bug. It's not a problem that they're not freezing things. They want to.

03:34:54 --> 03:35:04
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to play it that way, and that's what their customers demand. Like, the vast majority. The non-scamming, I'm-just-into-Bitcoin user.

03:35:04 --> 03:35:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Does not want to go to a platform that will abide by those rules.

03:35:09 --> 03:35:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The sharing, the working together between the two branches, in my opinion, that's just where the focus has to be, is how can you unify the interests of financial institutions and crypto exchanges in some other manner, where there's information sharing.

03:35:24 --> 03:35:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I just spoke about this on my intro, I'll say it again, why it is so important to focus on.

03:35:30 --> 03:35:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: activities kind of before they hit the platform? And the best way that we can say, what is out there in the world that is attacking a payment processor, a mortgage lender, a bank, a crypto exchange?

03:35:43 --> 03:35:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Because once it hits the platform, I think it's kind of a problem. I think there needs to be more focus on things that are happening outside of the institutions than inside. It's very important to focus what's going on with your own customers and your KYC processes and your AML and your investigations teams.

03:35:59 --> 03:36:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But I'm just going to underscore my perspective that the group should have a lot of focus on what happens outside as well.

03:36:08 --> 03:36:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Well, so that's interesting. So, Carol, did you want to chat? I wanted to give, if any of our crypto asset firms were available and want to respond. Yeah.

03:36:14 --> 03:36:18
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Hi, uh, whoa, that is weird. Um…

03:36:18 --> 03:36:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: My name is Jared. I run the investigations practice at Collisionless. We're a cryptocurrency compliance and investigative firm.

03:36:27 --> 03:36:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, I just wanted to…

03:36:29 --> 03:36:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Kind of expand on the, um…

03:36:32 --> 03:36:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: what Jason was saying about the crypto exchanges, that that's what their customers demand. But if you think of the money laundering pipeline as a sandwich.

03:36:43 --> 03:36:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Uh, both pieces of bread are traditional finance. Crypto is just the ham in the middle. So, even if you don't get the response that you would get from a crypto exchange.

03:36:56 --> 03:37:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: in the middle, you still have bread on both sides. Criminals are not interested in crypto. Crypto is a payment rail. It's a money transfer method. I come from federal law enforcement prior to being in the private sector, and when we would work.

03:37:11 --> 03:37:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Cartel cases where they would use cryptocurrency to move cash in place of bulk cash movements. The story remains the same. The bad guys want cash. They don't want crypto. So even if you try to push the honest on to a crypto exchange.

03:37:28 --> 03:37:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you still have traditional finance at both sides, and if traditional finance can pick up the slack where the crypto is lacking it, it's the same end result. In fact, it's potentially a better result. Say, for instance, the crypto company doesn't.

03:37:43 --> 03:37:58
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: um, do the freeze that you would like, but the receiving bank does hold the funds for, for an investigation, then it's irrelevant that the crypto company didn't. So, I think the, uh, the cliff notes to my point are, there are 3 points, or…

03:37:58 --> 03:38:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: technically four points, really. There's two crypto exchanges involved a lot of times. Um, there are four points at which you can intercept the money.

03:38:05 --> 03:38:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: At the initial bank, at the crypto exchange where the victim purchases crypto, at the crypto exchange where the bad guy swaps out of crypto back into fiat, and then at the receiving bank.

03:38:16 --> 03:38:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So you can get it at any one of those places. You have four opportunities.

03:38:22 --> 03:38:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That's what I thought.

03:38:23 --> 03:38:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, oh, we have a comment down here, Jess.

03:38:32 --> 03:38:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Okay.

03:38:34 --> 03:38:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I just, um… so, my name is Jessica Renier, I'm the Managing Director of Digital Finance at the Institute of International Finance, and I just… I briefly wanted to touch on your point, Jason, um, to be the devil's advocate here, um, because none of us want to pay taxes.

03:38:49 --> 03:39:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Right? We don't get a choice whether we pay taxes, right? Um, if I said that about all consumers and whatnot, and said, we don't want to behave that way, then, great, I think all of us would say that. So, uh, kind of saying, customers demand not to have to comply.

03:39:07 --> 03:39:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: with things that we expect out of, like, integrity of the financial system. They don't have to be applied the exact same way, right? But the objective still has to be achieved. So I take a little bit of issue with kind of the blanket, like, hey, clients just don't want to do that.

03:39:25 --> 03:39:41
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: kind of thing. And then just second quickly, back to kind of the objective of the working group, right? I do think, Carol, a lot of what you focused on, I think, you know, coming, being very disciplined to say, what is a framework?

03:39:41 --> 03:40:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that works across institutions and across the industry, um, is very much, um, advisable for a working group to focus their effort, um, and then figure out how does that then apply to the many different kinds of inclusive groups. Because otherwise, the focus of the group to actually achieve an outcome.

03:40:01 --> 03:40:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think we'll be challenged by how broad it is. Could you elucidate on that? When you say framework, what do you mean?

03:40:10 --> 03:40:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, so a few examples, um, that Carol brought up, um, is saying how, you know, how do we come up with, um, certain kinds of either the, um, agreement of certain kinds of data sets that we know when a thing happens, that we share, that is the data that we share, and this is how it gets out, regardless of whether it's.

03:40:29 --> 03:40:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: a bank, a crypto firm, uh, you know, another financial institution, somebody else, these are… these are the people that need to receive this, and this is what it looks like, right? That is useful to everyone, um, as opposed to kind of a… a narrow, uh, focus on a particular ad hoc issue.

03:40:48 --> 03:40:56
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, so I think in terms of… it's important to… that the group be inclusive of lots of types of players and efforts.

03:40:56 --> 03:41:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But if there isn't an overall approach for dealing with the issue as an umbrella framework, then you're likely to go down a rabbit hole of ad hoc issues.

03:41:09 --> 03:41:25
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, just real quick to respond, and then I'm gonna pass it to Carol, who I just rudely took her microphone, just because my name was mentioned. So, I think we're talking a little bit past each other, because I'm in agreement with you on some of that. The problem is, is that if the goal of a group like this.

03:41:25 --> 03:41:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Is to get as many players involved and under one umbrella and sharing.

03:41:31 --> 03:41:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the answer can't be, well, we're going to bring you to heel, and you're going to operate in the way that we want to operate, which is the complete antithesis to the way a lot of DeFi platforms, for instance, want to operate. They don't see themselves as financial institutions. They see themselves as something else. And you…

03:41:46 --> 03:42:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You might disagree, but that's how they see themselves. So if the goal is, hey, we need to get information sharing, we need to see what you see, we want to know, it's going to affect us downstream. It can't be, well, we're going to break you to operate the way we want you to operate.

03:42:00 --> 03:42:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: when they see that as, well, then I'm also gonna go bankrupt, so I gotta go… anything that's gonna drive more actors into the hands of illicit activity.

03:42:08 --> 03:42:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: To me, the goal should be to get as many players sharing as much information as possible, and that includes these institutions.

03:42:17 --> 03:42:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And to do that.

03:42:20 --> 03:42:26
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Everyone's gonna have to adjust in some way to account for new products and new types of activity that don't fit into…

03:42:26 --> 03:42:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: previous frameworks. That's essentially what I'll say. So that's… that's interesting. I'm gonna go back to that myself. Um, and I would like some traditional finance folks… Jen, I'm looking at you… to maybe weigh in on this. Uh, but Carol, I know you wanted to say something for a while. Sure, yeah, um…

03:42:43 --> 03:43:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, and I love you bringing up, like, thinking about a framework. Um, how many veterans in the room? Um, anybody? I see a few, yes. So, okay, nine-line medevac. Um, you know that if you are hurt anywhere, and I'm so sorry for anyone that has heard me give this, this metaphor before, there are nine pieces of information that you can call in over a radio.

03:43:00 --> 03:43:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: anywhere, and then, like, the good guys know where to come and help you, and, like, how you're hurt, and what help to bring. We do not have that for fraud. Um, we absolutely should, um, and obviously it's gonna be more than 9 pieces of information. Can you imagine only 9 column headers? It'd be amazing. Um, but, like, truly, that kind of an effort to understand, this is the bat signal.

03:43:19 --> 03:43:38
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: where to send it, who all needs it. There can obviously be additional other context, like, you're gonna have different kinds of information, but that is an important framework. Um, and actually, I'm hoping that organizations like IVAN, you brought up IVAN, I was actually part of the origin story of it. At the National Security Council, at the beginning of the last administration, we directed, um, the, like, we directed law enforcement to work.

03:43:38 --> 03:43:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: with industry to develop a rapid tracing and interdiction capability and partnership. So that's what Elicit Virtual Asset Notification, IVAN, partnership stands for. And where I really do hope that they will continue to grow and expand and automate the way that the Rapid Response Program and Financial Fraud Kill Chain is supposed to work.

03:43:55 --> 03:44:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Related to crypto, knowing that I, like, I was regulator at FinCEN, wrote the first EO on digital assets many years ago. My views, these are very much personal and do not reflect ACAMS or any of my other partners. I absolutely find that a lot of, like, I agree with you that in a term of practicality, a lot of institutions.

03:44:15 --> 03:44:34
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: say, I'm not a person, this is just a self-automating, optimizing software, and it is, in fact, the thing. But a lot of these people are, like, these things are a lot more centralized than they claim to be. They have administrators, they have entities to go to. There does need to be an evolution of thinking about what the right obligations are to adapt to it, the same way that Ben and Jess were intimating that, like, one.

03:44:34 --> 03:44:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: kind of financial institution is not like another, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have obligations. And part of my challenge with the crypto industry, I have seen huge crypto companies tell me they will be responsive to a North Korea request, but not to a fraud request because it's not a national security problem. I had words for them, continue to.

03:44:50 --> 03:45:07
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: But this issue continues to be a real challenge with the ecosystem and the fact that they've also used this, that there's not an intermediary. My own controversial view is also that different layers in the stack, not just exchanges, serve as intermediaries, validators and nodes.

03:45:07 --> 03:45:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: who are, in large cases, choosing to put a blindfold on and basically notarize transactions, saying, yep, that's real, yep, that's real, to sanctioned transactions, certainly to fraudulent transactions. I'm not saying we have to go to that layer of the stack. That would be a new change. But if we can't mitigate the risk at one layer, where do you want to go?

03:45:24 --> 03:45:40
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Do you want to go down to the admin layer? Do you want to go down to the network layer? These are all options that need to be debated. Hopefully, we can focus on the exchanges and the centers of gravity. I prefer focusing on as few center points as possible to mitigate the risk. But if we don't get our hands on this problem and improve the compliance issue that Ben pointed to.

03:45:40 --> 03:45:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We've really got to figure out how we're going to evolve this, how we're going to evolve what our approach on disruption looks like, because the current state of compliance and security is unacceptable.

03:45:51 --> 03:45:57
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, do we have anyone in the audience that wanted to say anything? Although, I want to hand it over to you, Mike. Um, and I am curious…

03:45:57 --> 03:46:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So we've talked a lot about the holding of funds.

03:46:01 --> 03:46:19
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Jason's got a different opinion. I mean, so I could restate kind of what you said, is that because it's not in the crypto business model to freeze funds, we should continue to enable them to exfiltrate funds from victims to scammers without any recourse or any challenges. No, I'm just saying, but that's one way to say exactly what you just said.

03:46:19 --> 03:46:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And so, you know, I think there's going to be some challenges in that space because I don't think it should all fall on TradFi to stop the scammers and the flow of funds. No, no, no, it's up to Mike now. So I'm just repeating kind of what Jared said. I mean, I think it's a sandwich analogy.

03:46:36 --> 03:46:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: with the sandwich, though, is a lot of times the crypto exchanges won't tell where those money went, so we can't find that last TradFi point, so it all stops there. If they don't hold the funds and they don't share the information, then that person loses their down payment on their house.

03:46:50 --> 03:47:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And so that, you know, I don't think that's a… where we want to end up as a financial sector, because I think you do lose trust in that space. So we're gonna have to figure out some way to come… I agree, we'd much rather a collaborative thing, but I will tell you, if that's the.

03:47:02 --> 03:47:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: there will be things that my organization will probably advocate for that crypto companies won't want. Um, so, but Mike, I'm curious on your thoughts on this, uh, and wanted to bring you in the conversation, and Siddharth, I'd like to hear your thoughts next.

03:47:14 --> 03:47:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I'm going to…

03:47:16 --> 03:47:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I agree with the first half of what Jason said and then go against the second part.

03:47:20 --> 03:47:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And thinking about what this group can do. I think there's inevitability in kind of global regulation, national legislations, which is going to bring cryptocurrency and virtual asset providers into a kind of similar KYC for opening accounts.

03:47:37 --> 03:47:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: being able to interdict funds. In certain jurisdictions, absolutely, obviously. Yeah, and I think that that is… but it's something… that's not something we could do.

03:47:45 --> 03:48:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I agree with the first thing is what we could do is absolutely open the doors to a conversation around how we collaborate and cooperate with those cryptocurrency organizations who want to. And there are those that I've been approached who said we've got funds. How can we get that back? We know that.

03:48:01 --> 03:48:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: This has come from a bank account and gone into a bad actor's wallet.

03:48:07 --> 03:48:21
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: can we give this information and get it to banks? And I think we can do something like that about putting in those collaborative mechanisms to be able to facilitate those who want to do the right thing to do the right thing. Because at the moment, it's like, well, are we… there's a lack of trust.

03:48:21 --> 03:48:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I believe, between the two worlds, and this group could play an important role of building those bridges.

03:48:28 --> 03:48:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um…

03:48:30 --> 03:48:45
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: In terms of the other thing around what this group could do, the things that I'm… the other part I was concerned, we had crypto, but also money that goes to bank accounts in other jurisdictions, is that we see two problems. One, something called FIFOs, fly-in, fly-out mules.

03:48:45 --> 03:49:03
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: That the money laundering is such a global business that people will be flown into other countries with their… to open bank accounts. We're not sharing that information. We're not sharing information on fraudulent IBANs. So here in the US, you might say, we know that this destination account of scam funds is going into the UAE or Dubai.

03:49:03 --> 03:49:09
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Well, maybe they're coming also from scam victims in the UK, and scam victims in Singapore.

03:49:09 --> 03:49:27
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We need some mechanism to be able to share that type of information. Now, I come from a practical organization that shares data, not a policy organization, so I'm always thinking, what more could we share and facilitate to share, which gives us an opportunity to close down the funds going into the hands of bad actors.

03:49:27 --> 03:49:42
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And why not this group to try to facilitate, um, some innovation between, um, and it goes back to, I think, an American president who said, like, a coalition of the willing. Let's start with those organizations and countries who want to do something about this.

03:49:43 --> 03:49:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I think that's a great point. So, Siddharth, if we go, and then Jason, I will give you a chance to respond.

03:49:49 --> 03:50:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think the first thing that I want to start off with is Plaid is a commercial organization, and that means that I have to sell compliance software to people. And let me tell you, selling compliance software to people has made me hear things that are truly terrifying. And I can give examples, such as, like, not being interested in financial fraud.

03:50:08 --> 03:50:24
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: or only willing to allow, uh, or allowing any OFAC entity as long as they're not a, quote, serious terrorist, that have been said on these recorded calls. And so, when, as someone who's, like, selling this software, I think we really have to think about the incentives in place.

03:50:24 --> 03:50:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And one of the ways that Plaid does that really well is that we have products that help actually protect fraud of…

03:50:30 --> 03:50:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the end customer, as well as the customer who's buying the platform. And when you are able to do things like this, it's in their own incentive to actually be able to go in and stop these crimes. And so, as an example, we have a machine learning model that's able to guarantee a certain payment. Well, in that specific case, it's in our best interest to make sure that the end user is not getting scammed, and if they are getting scammed.

03:50:51 --> 03:51:12
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: we have these machine learning models that are able to go back and refund the payment. However, at the same time, the customers also, it's in their best interest to make sure that they don't have a wire that's coming in, and intentionally they lose a bunch of money that they thought they were actually going to get. And when I think about a lot of these situations that the team's bringing up around, like, forcing customers, I think you can have a lot of success in.

03:51:12 --> 03:51:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: forcing customers to do a number of different things, especially when they're at a bigger stage. But my goal is to try and figure out how can we take a lot of these signals and transform them so that they're not only beneficial to the end user, the scam victim, but as well as beneficial to the customer…

03:51:28 --> 03:51:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: of Plaid or any other organization, and then when we sell these, it benefits the customer, it benefits the end user, and we can actually be at a point where we have better protections in place. And then, finally, I think one important thing that I really want to stress is that we live in an age of social media.

03:51:44 --> 03:52:00
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and our attention spans are fried. And unfortunately, what that means is that if you put any type of friction during the process, what's gonna happen is that these customers, or, like, these end users, they're just gonna go off and open Instagram or TikTok. And what we've seen at Plaid is customers who are very.

03:52:00 --> 03:52:16
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: stringent about having anti-scam protections in place, they don't tend to do as well, which is a harsh thing to say, but it is, in fact, the truth. And when you look at it from that perspective, if you force a lot of friction into the process, then what you're going to have is end customers who.

03:52:16 --> 03:52:31
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: follow your regulations, in, like, 5-10 years, they're gonna go out of business, and the only ones that are gonna remain in business are actually, like, platforms that play very fast and loose with the rules. And I think that is one of the biggest concerns that we have at Plaid, which is, how can we actually make sure.

03:52:31 --> 03:52:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that, like, complying with regulations, actually helping protect the end user is as frictionless as possible. And that's where a lot of technology and user research and design plays a much more important role than, I think, purely just sharing of information.

03:52:46 --> 03:52:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I do want to open it up to the audience. Does anyone have. Oh, there we go, Jen. There we go.

03:52:54 --> 03:53:11
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Since I knew you were gonna call on me anyway. Jen Martin, EVP, Head of Fraud at Citizens Bank. I think, you know, obviously, we're in the fight every day. I think there's a little bit of a misnomer out there that people think that we know in the moment that scams are happening, that this kill chain is…

03:53:11 --> 03:53:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: instantaneous. We see the big million dollars going out, and we all rally together, and we go and stop it. Like, the reality is that, like, the experience that was described to us during the AARP session this morning, it's the person who buys gold bars that gives it away on a Friday and realizes late in the day on Monday.

03:53:29 --> 03:53:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that it's fraud and the money is gone, right? Like, more often than not, days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months occurs between when the customer is, or a business, is, like, falling for the scam and then accepting it. And the fraudsters know this, right? And they're really good about putting in all these delay tactics.

03:53:47 --> 03:54:02
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We see so many scammy wires on a Friday afternoon on the last business day of the month, last day of the quarter. Right. Like if a Friday happens, last day of the quarter, last day of the month, you know, it's like all day scam day in your wire room. Right. And so like.

03:54:02 --> 03:54:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: They know to go after those days when people aren't looking around the holidays, right? So whatever solution does come to bear, the fraudsters know, right? If I know that funds are going to another bank, I can call that bank and pretty much kill it. If we know fast enough, we can kill it ourselves.

03:54:20 --> 03:54:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The reality is like they put in a lot of time and then they know to move the money, move it offshore, move it to crypto, moved it crypto, crypto, crypto. I mean, anymore now we'll see funds go to eight different locations before it's all said and done. Right.

03:54:35 --> 03:54:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think there's a bunch of willing partners out there. It's rare that we're told, no, absolutely not, we're not going to help. It's just that by the time the fraudsters know that we're going after it and they're going to get it out to as many places as possible.

03:54:50 --> 03:55:08
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Like, a lot of times when I hear about the conversation about sharing data, that's great. But the reality is, is that, like, so much time happens somehow between the act and then trying to go get those funds back. It's like, I think it's great. The more is better. But I think it's not practical sometimes.

03:55:08 --> 03:55:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: We could have so many kill chains and still not ever really be able to get those funds back.

03:55:13 --> 03:55:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, and I think that's a great point. You know, the goal is to try and move as fast as we possibly can and recognize there's gotta be other controls in place. And I think people have talked about it, Jason, I think that's what you focused on, was the preventative measures, the warnings so that, you know, that those funds don't leave the bank or the financial institution in.

03:55:29 --> 03:55:44
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think it's got to be both pieces going forward. Because I get those calls on Saturday from small banks who want to know how to reach Citizens or PNC or Wells Fargo. And I'm like, oh, because that's exactly what happened on that Friday night. And so the wires go out and they want to try and stop them before that Monday. Jason, did you want to.

03:55:44 --> 03:55:52
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: No, just wanted to echo that that was… that's kind of my point. That proactive look outside, I think that's the real blind spot.

03:55:52 --> 03:56:05
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that I see with banking clients just across the way is what is happening before it hits. Once it hits the platform, it is often too late, and you give a perfect example of it. If something comes in Friday night.

03:56:05 --> 03:56:23
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you don't actually get the evidence that you need that something bad has happened at the bank until Monday, and now it's too late. Right. Um, and so that is what I'm… that's a perfect example of what I think a lot of the focus and a lot of this work group should share. Success stories about any proactive things that.

03:56:23 --> 03:56:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: people can do, or that you're seeing success with at your institutions, that you can share the methodology, goals that we can share about what a proper.

03:56:33 --> 03:56:54
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: investigation unit proactive outside of your institution looks like, you know, who to go to, where places that we can gather information. The good news about that is also that information maybe isn't as protected. So, like, you don't need to worry about data you're not allowed to share. That type of stuff is often open source intelligence that you can share with everyone.

03:56:54 --> 03:57:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Yeah, and I think mule strategies, right? You have to have that in the conversations. The banks that have really good mule monitoring, by the time we call them, they're like, yeah, we're just waiting for your phone call. We've got the funds, we'll send them back, right? And, like, there's banks that do it really, really well. Um, and I think getting that information, I think.

03:57:10 --> 03:57:28
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: to all the banks and the ABA, right? These are really good mule strategies. This is what to be on the lookout for, like, suspicious funds coming in, and you can hold those. Yeah, so I think… so what I think, you know, we've got about 5 minutes left. You know, what I hear is, I think, coalescing around two different focus areas. One on.

03:57:28 --> 03:57:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the prevention side of things. So I think Jess said the framework of what information needs to be shared focused on that prevention side of things. I think, uh, Siddharth, you said it right. What are the incentives for that sharing? How do we align that so that people will participate in those pieces? Um, and what does that look like? What is that base information that we need?

03:57:43 --> 03:57:59
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And what does it look like for each sector? And delving down. So I think that's maybe one potential deliverable that comes out. I think the other one is then on the post-boom side of things. Like, how do we build a coalition of the willing? Recognizing not every crypto will want to participate, but how do we, when we do know that it happens, and we do find it in time.

03:57:59 --> 03:58:15
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You know, banks, traditional banks, if they've got contacts and they've got trust, you know, Jen, you can reach out to lots of banks and they'll freeze just because you've asked. Small banks don't necessarily have that same thing where they might reach out and like, well, I don't know if I trust you've done your due diligence. So how do we standardize.

03:58:15 --> 03:58:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: that do want to participate, that do want to hold those things. So I think those are the pieces.

03:58:20 --> 03:58:35
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: you know, like you said, Mike, that coalition of the willing for folks to engage in that piece. So I think that's… that's kind of what I'm hearing. Uh, but in the last couple minutes, I just want to go down the line, give everyone a last chance to kind of your thoughts. What do you think of those last two things? Um, and do you want to add one, subt.

03:58:35 --> 03:58:37
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And let me know what you think. Mike?

03:58:37 --> 03:58:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I won't add any, because I think any working group should really focus on one or two things where we can make a difference, and I think identifying them in this working group is a fantastic starting point. Um, I think…

03:58:49 --> 03:59:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: One thing that the group can also do, having said that, you stick to the two, is there's plenty of international examples of things that work, whether it's in mule strategies which work elsewhere, or tools that are being used for us to be sharing, because there's lots of innovations and technologies that are being developed. In the UK, because we have a system in place where banks have to reimburse the victim of a scam.

03:59:17 --> 03:59:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: both the sending and receiving bank, a lot of innovation is being progressed because the bottom line's being hit. So I think that, um, we're not geniuses there, it's just the fact that, you know, that has been the problem we've had to engage with and address.

03:59:32 --> 03:59:48
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So, you know, there's an offer here. We learn from you, you can learn from us. And I think there's a big community through GASA that we can learn about mule strategies and also through the technologies to prevent and identify someone who's actually in part of that scam journey.

03:59:48 --> 03:59:50
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, which we heard about today.

03:59:51 --> 04:00:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Wonderful. Actually, the way that we at the International Task Force in our launch paper, we framed we were trying to structure how we wanted to focus our different efforts, and we focused on prevention, detection, disruption, interdiction, and then redress, because each of those kind of intimate different issues. And so we felt that that was a helpful way to structure it. The working group could think about which.

04:00:14 --> 04:00:32
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Which of those are the areas for highest impact on the prevention side? Agreed. I, since we haven't talked about digital identity, I will say that every single one of these kinds of financial institutions are absolutely being pwned all day, every day with fake identities. Like fake identities are everywhere in, in money laundering and illicit finance, but certainly in the conduct of fraud.

04:00:32 --> 04:00:51
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So fixing those identity solutions up front, um, is also going to be a huge, a huge help and fix on, um, the broader issues, um, on fraud, um, and on combating frauds and scams, and then more broadly on some of the sharing of things like mules, as well as understanding of, like, the best signals and practices, like you mentioned, that, like, the anomaly detection.

04:00:51 --> 04:01:14
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: and other patterns of behavior that indicate, ah, this looks like this illicit activity. I think that that would be a really high value place to focus on. And then on the, and then I, between those four disruption and active interdiction, like I believe that that is something I, yeah, so I encourage, I, I love the way that you structured it. I think that those buckets of prevention and disruption are the two highest impact areas where the working group could go.

04:01:16 --> 04:01:30
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: So I've already voiced that my interest is primarily in things that are happening before they get to the institutions themselves, and so I'll echo that one last time. Um, and the only thing that I would also just add as a final thought.

04:01:30 --> 04:01:47
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Somehow I got thrown in as the crypto guy, which I am not at all. Most of our clients at Inca Digital are traditional finance institutions, not cryptocurrency companies. However, we do work with a lot of them, and I do think they're now an important rail in this system.

04:01:48 --> 04:01:55
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: it is a good idea to include them as much as… There are plenty of good actors who want to do stuff.

04:01:55 --> 04:02:10
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: You know, there's plenty who are still KYC is murder and, you know, hands off my crypto, but a lot of them do want to do well. They don't know where to go. They don't know who they can talk to and who's an enemy who wants to destroy their business model.

04:02:10 --> 04:02:13
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I don't think that…

04:02:13 --> 04:02:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: This working group should kind of embrace that attitude towards them. You should want to bring them into the fold, get their ideas, things they can do. And I can also say based on personal experience, a lot of these groups are more proactive in the way that I'm talking about than the traditional finance institutions who are only looking inward.

04:02:29 --> 04:02:43
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Um, so, I do think it's a good idea for the working group to cast as wide a net to gather as many people in this coalition of the willing as possible, uh, to get as many people on board and working together as possible.

04:02:43 --> 04:02:46
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Great. Siddharth, last word.

04:02:46 --> 04:03:01
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: I think the big thing that I want to, like, tell everyone here is that you will have a lot of job security in the coming years. And the reason is, like, at Plaid, we track a lot of fraud that occurs on our platform, and we, like, work with customers to be able to understand what it is.

04:03:01 --> 04:03:17
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: In the past 10 months, it's gone up, I think, something like 65%, which is a disgusting stat in just 10 months. And it's not just the biggest customers are seeing more fraud, but a number of different customers are seeing more and more fraud, and the number of customers as well.

04:03:17 --> 04:03:33
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: And when I see something like that, it really is because of a lot of the new AI coding and capabilities there. We've seen the number of individual fraudsters jump by 45%. So we track the size of fraud rings. The median continues to be around four.

04:03:33 --> 04:03:49
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: The averages have dropped from 11 to like three. And it's because so many people just with a Claude Code subscription for $20 a month are now saying, help me commit fraud. And previously those people had no way of doing so, and now they do. And I think that's the mindset that we should really be taking into this.

04:03:49 --> 04:04:06
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: is that the world is going to get significantly more complicated. I'd like to close out with one of my favorite stories about AI agents, which is someone in Australia wanted to join a 7:00 AM Pilates class. It was completely full. They asked their agent, hey, can you get me in? Thinking it would just put them on a wait list.

04:04:06 --> 04:04:20
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: the agent decided the best way to do it is to hack the gym, kick out everyone else, so that there would be, like, a solo Pilates class just for their operator. And now you can imagine that, like, what happens when someone asks an agent, hey, help me make rent this month?

04:04:20 --> 04:04:29
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: These things will do things that you have no idea, that we are not very well prepared for, and we really should be acting very strongly right away.

04:04:29 --> 04:04:36
Global Anti-Scam Alliance: Well, on that happy note, we are out of time, and so thank you all for attending. I appreciate the insights from our panel. Thank you.
