Fraud Forward

About Fraud Forward

Fraud Forward is a banking-focused podcast bringing together fraud fighters, risk leaders, and financial crime experts to explore how fraud is evolving, and how financial institutions must adapt. Each episode features practical, candid conversations with teams in the trenches, covering strategy, governance, prevention, and recovery. Rather than chasing headlines, Fraud Forward focuses on what’s working, what’s changing, and what fraud leaders need to prepare for as financial crime accelerates. This is where banking comes together to challenge assumptions, pressure-test controls, and move fraud forward.

Publisher

Hailey Windham

Category

business · business · government

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

1 May 2024

Latest episode

21 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

125 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 Oct 2026

   The PSECU Fraud Files: Turning Member Stories Into Fraud Prevention

   What’s up fraud fighters, and welcome back to Fraud Forward! We spend a lot of time talking about how scams work. This time we’re talking about how a scam feels while it’s happening to someone, and why one credit union decide that was the most important story to tell. Amanda Balmer, Director of Financial Crimes at SPECU, has joined me for conversations at conferences before. This is the first time she gets an episode of her own. Amanda leads a team of analysts, investigators, and strategists who protect members. And she’s a big part of why PSECU Fraud Files (https://www.sardine.ai/media/fraud-forward/episodes/psecu-fraud-files) exists. It’s a video series the credit union built with its marketing team that shares real member stories, anonymized, to help other members spot the warning signs before they lose money. We dig into why PSECU moved from a newsletter to storytelling while protecting member privacy and dignity, all to build a series that is changing the way members and employees talk about fraud. We also look at the scams hitting credit unions right now, including how a fraudster can coach someone to lie to their own financial institution. If you have ever wondered how a story can treat member education as both an awareness effort and a fraud control, this one is for you. What you’ll hear in this episode: How Amanda went from criminal justice student to social worker, private investigator, intelligence analyst, and now director of financial crimes How a team of analysts, investigators, and strategists works across PSECU to protect members and the credit union Why impostor scams, including bank impersonation scams and one-time passcode scams, are the trend having the biggest impact right now How fraudsters coach victims to get around the questions financial institutions ask Why PSECU treats member fraud education as both awareness and a fraud control How the Fraud Files evolved from a newsletter into fraud awareness videos built around real member stories How PSECU approaches anonymizing member fraud stories and takes the shame out of them A complete job scam story involving a fake check and a mobile deposit, and the scam red flags it reveals What frontline employees can notice in an ordinary conversation, and how these stories have changed internal training and empathy You should listen to this episode if you: Work in credit union fraud prevention and want a model for member education that goes beyond warning lists Are thinking about sharing real member stories and need a plan for privacy, marketing, and legal approval Lead or train frontline staff and want practical ways to bring fraud prevention into everyday conversations Want to understand how job scams, fake checks, and mobile deposit check fraud look from the member’s point of view Support scam victims and want language that replaces blame with understanding Are trying to build a better working relationship with your marketing team

2. 

   14 Oct 2026

   Fraud Controls Are Everywhere. So Where’s the Accountability?

   What’s up fraud fighters, and welcome back to Fraud Forward! I want to talk about something that might be a little uncomfortable. It isn’t about a new scheme or a criminal using AI to break into a bank. It’s about our own fraud controls (https://www.sardine.ai/media/fraud-forward/episodes/fraud-controls), and the gap between having them and knowing they work. Two stories from the past week made me want to have this conversation. The first is a $350 million penalty against American Express National Bank tied to deficiencies in its BSA and AML program. The second is a guilty plea from a former TD Bank employee who admitted to accepting bribes and helping launder more than $4.8 million. The facts are very different, and neither institution looks like a community bank or credit union with a fraud team of two. Even so, the same questions show up at every size. Does your risk assessment reflect the business you run today? Who reviews the people with the power to override a control? And when someone finds a weakness, who makes sure it gets fixed? I’m also bringing in what we’ve learned from our financial institution fraud benchmarking research, because it points to a question I keep returning to. What does a mature fraud program actually look like? Let’s get into it. What you’ll hear in this episode: Why the American Express enforcement action is a lesson in fraud risk assessment, and what happens when an assessment focuses on a narrow part of a much larger business Why the roughly $13 billion in suspected activity cited by the OCC reflects deficiencies in a BSA and AML program, and why it shouldn’t be repeated as a fraud loss How a former TD Bank employee allegedly used legitimate access to unblock restricted cards, and why employee override monitoring deserves more attention than it gets What 86 accounts at one commercial address teach us about transaction monitoring and what should happen after an alert fires Practical ways smaller teams can use compensating controls when they can’t fully separate duties Why documenting a known control weakness is not the same as managing it, and how remediation tracking can quietly stall A simple framework that separates control existence vs execution vs effectiveness Metrics that show real exposure to leadership, beyond alert counts and cases closed Five questions to bring to your fraud team on Monday You should listen to this episode if you: Lead or support a fraud program at a community bank or credit union and have to cover a lot of ground with a small team Want to know whether your fraud risk assessment is driving decisions or only documenting them Are responsible for managing insider risk or employee access and want practical ways to review overrides Need help explaining known control weaknesses to leadership in a way that leads to action Are comparing your program against peers and want to know what a mature fraud program looks like

3. 

   7 Oct 2026

   Fraud Follows the Money: What Washington & Vegas Have Me Thinking About

   What's up fraud fighters and welcome back to Fraud Forward! I just got home from Las Vegas at four in the morning on Friday after starting the week in Washington DC. I am home for exactly two more sleeps before I turn around and leave again. Today there is no guest. It is just me, my microphone, and a notebook full of things to talk about. I started the week at HHS then I flew from DC to Vegas for ACAMS The Assembly. Two completely different rooms. Yet I kept writing down versions of the same thing. Culture. Data. Accountability. Collaboration. Speed. Technology. And then one sentence from Washington ended up framing the entire week for me. Fraud follows money. That is how this episode starts and that is how it ends. Where the money goes, fraud follows. When the money changes, fraud changes. When the way we move money gets faster, fraud gets faster. When we create a new product, somebody figures out how to exploit it. When we close one vulnerability, they find another. That is fraud driven flows (https://www.sardine.ai/media/fraud-forward/episodes/fraud-driven-flows) in practice. And if you pay attention to where the money is going next, you will have a much better picture of where the fraud is going. What you’ll hear in this episode: Why fraud driven flows connects real-time payments fraud, stablecoin fraud risks, and check fraud in the digital age into one through line Government fraud program banking parallels that reframe how we think about audit accountability and corrective action Why fraud prevention stewardship and the line a dollar saved is worth more than a dollar recovered should change how we talk to leadership How fraud program culture functions as a control and why fraud incentive misalignment quietly defeats everything else we build What ACAMS Assembly 2026 insights on real-time payments fraud and stablecoin financial crime risks mean for fraud risk beyond organizational boundary Why fraud technology before problem definition is still one of the most expensive mistakes in fraud programs and what AI fraud results measurement should actually look like How fraud program single point of failure is a fraud risk hiding inside a staffing conversation Why fraud collaboration operationalized looks nothing like fraud collaboration discussed You should listen to this episode if you: Lead a fraud program and have ever felt like you are having the same conversation in completely different rooms Are trying to figure out how to measure fraud prevention value and tell a better story to leadership Care about fraud program culture and want to hear why it functions as a control, not a soft concept Have ever bought technology before understanding the problem you were trying to solve Are dealing with fraud knowledge retention risk because one person on your team knows everything and you are not sure what happens when they leave

Who has been a guest on Fraud Forward

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Simon Taylor
• Tal Yeshanov
• Joseph Cox
• Karisse Hendrick
• Jen Lamont

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

10 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.