Fraudology Podcast with Karisse Hendrick

In this episode of Fraudology, Karisse Hendrick provides a comprehensive debrief following the massive shifts in the world of artificial intelligence and digital fraud. Karisse shares her highlights and lowlights from navigating the industry's rapid evolution, cutting through the future-looking hype to provide practical insights for fraud and payments professionals.
The conversation explores the evolving mechanics of Agentic AI in commerce, detailing how partnerships like the new Visa and OpenAI infrastructure are designed to make AI commerce a reality. Karisse provides an inside look at why OpenAI previously shelved its original agentic project to avoid becoming a merchant of record, shifting away from full structural ownership due to complex liability rules and low initial adoption.
We also explore the "hot topics" dominating the fraud landscape today:
The VAMP Threshold "Cliff": How Visa’s monitoring programs offer no "trial" or "safety" months anymore, immediately penalizing merchants the first month they cross thresholds with instant fines and fees per chargeback and TC40.
The Complexity of Agentic Chargebacks: Real-world examples of "authorized" AI purchases where merchants are automatically losing disputes because card brands do not yet have established "compelling evidence" rules or representment provisions for AI agents.
The Hook of Cloned Sites: Why AI models looking purely for the "best deal" are inadvertently leading consumers straight into elaborate, cloned phishing websites that harvest credit card data and trigger fraudulent descriptors.

Additionally, Karisse dives into the latest real-world data from a recent UK case study highlighting how fraudulent duplicate sites for household brands appeared directly inside ChatGPT's search indexes. We break down the immediate operational steps fraud leaders must take to protect their customer service channels and coordinate with IT to combat malicious DNS activity before these automated losses skyrocket.

In this episode of Fraudology, Karisse Hendrick sits down with Hailey Windham, Community Lead for Banking at Sardine and host of the Fraud Forward podcast. Hailey shares her journey transitioning from a practitioner at community financial institutions to the vendor side, focusing entirely on providing practical, operational insights for credit unions and community bank fraud teams.
The conversation explores the highly anticipated June 2026 updated guidance from FinCEN regarding Section 314B of the USA Patriot Act. Hailey breaks down how this new fact sheet eliminates long-standing confusion and regulatory fears, giving financial institutions a robust legal framework to safely share information and collaborate under a liability safe harbor.
We also explore the "hot topics" dominating the banking fraud landscape today:
Fraud Explicitly in Scope: How the new guidance expands past narrow money laundering limits to formally include computer fraud and scams targeting individuals, organizations, or governments.
Reasonable Suspicion vs. Certainty: Why teams no longer need a fully completed investigation or total certainty before sharing data, making early sharing on incomplete information permissible.
Real-Time Data Transmission: The protocol shifts allowing financial institutions to share verbal alerts, video surveillance footage, IP addresses, and attempted transactions in real time.
The Power of Associations: How non-bank compliance providers and industry trade groups can now legally organize 314B associations so smaller institutions don't have to fight fraud alone.

Additionally, Hailey dives into the preliminary insights from the industry’s first practitioner-built benchmarking survey for community banks and credit unions under $10 billion. We examine the systemic issues keeping banking fraud fighters up at night, from rigid legacy core system limitations to the immense pressures of tackling an exponential surge in social engineering scams with limited resources.

Connect with Hailey Windham

In this episode of Fraudology, Karisse Hendrick provides a comprehensive debrief following the Merchant Risk Council (MRC) Vegas conference. Karisse shares her highlights and lowlights from one of the industry's biggest events, cutting through the conference hype to provide practical insights for fraud and payments professionals.
The conversation explores the evolving mechanics of Agentic AI in commerce, detailing how tools like Sardine are now identifying AI agents by monitoring "invisible" behaviors, such as fields being filled without mouse movement. Karisse provides an inside look at why OpenAI recently shelved its "instant checkout" feature, moving away from being a merchant of record to avoid the liability of chargebacks and complex transaction enablement.
We also explore the "hot topics" dominating the fraud landscape today:
The VAMP Threshold "Cliff": How Visa is drastically reducing high-risk merchant ratios from 220 basis points to 150 basis points this April, potentially catching many enterprise merchants off guard.
The Complexity of Agentic Chargebacks: Real-world examples of "authorized" AI purchases where merchants are losing disputes because card brands like Visa do not yet have established "compelling evidence" protocols for AI agents.
The Human Element vs. AI: Why senior fraud leadership cannot be replaced by LLMs, as the critical "domain expertise" required to manage sophisticated fraud is not found in open-source data.

Additionally, Karisse dives into the latest FTC fraud statistics, revealing a staggering 430% increase in fraud since 2020. We break down the $375 million jury verdict against Meta in New Mexico, a historic win for child safety that challenges the long-standing "Section 230" liability shield. Finally, we examine a Reuters study uncovering how Meta's ability to block scam ads depends almost entirely on the financial liability they face in specific countries.

In this episode of Fraudology, Karisse Hendrick provides a comprehensive debrief following her long-awaited conversation with Kathy Stokes, the Senior Director of Fraud Prevention for AARP. Kathy shares her highlights and lowlights from leading the Fraud Watch Network, cutting through the general consumer education hype to provide practical insights for fraud and payments professionals.
The conversation explores the evolving mechanics of fraud victimization in commerce, detailing how organizations like AARP are now identifying systemic vulnerabilities by monitoring "invisible" behaviors, such as how society naturally blames the victims of these crimes. Kathy provides an inside look at why the industry must move away from simply playing "whack-a-mole" at the point of transaction, moving toward shared intelligence to avoid the massive financial and emotional liabilities of sophisticated networks.
We also explore the "hot topics" dominating the fraud landscape today:
The Private-Public Intelligence Threshold: How the National Elder Fraud Coordination Center (NEFCC/NEFSI) is bringing enterprise giants like Amazon, Google, and Walmart together with law enforcement to drastically turn isolated smaller incidents into massive, prosecutable organized crime cases.
The Complexity of Systemic Collaboration: Real-world examples of how major financial institutions are shifting their legal stances from hiding data due to perceived risk, to realizing that there is a far greater risk if they do not share fraud data across networks.
The Human Element vs. The Script: Why senior fraud leadership and empathetic human support systems cannot be replaced by generic checklists, as the critical domain expertise and emotional recovery required to turn victims into survivors is found only through dedicated peer communities.

Additionally, Kathy dives into the latest AARP initiatives, revealing the staggering reality of a $200 billion a year crime loss that impacts countless demographics across the United States. We break down the production behind AARP's Fraud Wars YouTube series, a historic project designed to humanize the impact of fraud and challenge the long-standing apathy within enterprise spaces. Finally, we examine how an organization's willingness to block scams depends almost entirely on shifting corporate mindsets away from accepting multi-million dollar losses as just an "acceptable level of risk."

**To sign up for the VAMP Webinar, June 16 at 1pm ET:
https://events.zoom.us/ev/AjeqbDavKTXXc6iR8Z6Sbr8ttRf-9pqHa4fj_vccOfo1dwgNt6sG~AnY80C-qT5FYf6tPvk9UKHiJqkeUb_76qCOKNJdretWRhD6K3Ps2OwBmPw
In this solo episode of Fraudology, Karisse Hendrick breaks down a potpourri of recent fraud news stories that are shaking up both the retail and banking sectors. Karisse exposes how organized crime rings are shifting their tactics to outsmart even the tightest security frameworks, highlighting why continuous adaptation is the only defense in a rapidly evolving threat landscape.
The conversation explores the mechanics of a highly devious new retail scam targeting major retailers through manipulated HTML price-matching. Karisse provides an inside look at how these groups leverage local code manipulation on personal devices to walk away with hundreds of dollars in real store credit per hit, effectively dodging security measures previously put in place to halt bulk gift card theft.
We also explore the "hot topics" dominating the fraud landscape today:
The Power and Price of AI Cybersecurity: How major US banks are scrambling to patch thousands of IT vulnerabilities exposed by Anthropic's new preview model, Mythos, which can stitch together low-risk flaws into serious, exploitable threats.
The Reality of AI Replacement Plans: Why CEOs are facing unexpected hurdles with corporate layoffs, balancing the spiraling token costs of running AI agents against the irreplaceable institutional knowledge of human teams.
Biometric Exfiltration from Selfies: The startling reality of "scissor-hand" or peace sign poses in photos, where modern high-resolution cameras and AI tools allow fraudsters to reconstruct permanent fingerprint ridges.
The Scale vs. Quality Shift in Phishing: How AI bots are allowing bad actors to simultaneously launch highly personalized bank impersonation attacks against small community banks and regional credit unions, overwhelming their baseline operational capacities.

Additionally, Karisse dives into the strategic logistics behind these multi-state fraud sprees, detailing how criminals use encrypted messaging apps and overseas reshippers to launder their proceeds. We break down the connection between retail fraud and elder tech support scams, revealing how stolen or victim-funded gift cards feed directly into high-end electronic purchases. Finally, we examine how deep-web dumps of dead credit card data are weaponized by scammers to accurately identify a consumer's specific financial institution before they ever make a call.