The Saturday Fraud Strategist

Okay, so here is the thing about reducing false positives . Most teams want to jump straight into tactics. Tune the rule. Adjust the threshold. Add an exemption. Move the weird edge cases into manual review. Fine. All of that might be useful. But honestly, if that is where you start, you are probably guessing. And guessing in fraud prevention is not exactly my favorite operating model. Not because...

In this episode of The Saturday Fraud Strategist, I talk with Gilit Saporta about ad tech in financial fraud, which sounds very niche until you realize it touches malware, fake traffic, bot detection, consumer abuse, advertising fraud, and a lot of systems quietly pretending they have this handled. Ad tech fraud is not just “someone clicked a fake ad.” That would almost be simple. What we’re reall...

One of the most common mistakes I see fraud teams make is attacking false positives head on. A customer complains. The CEO says the model is blocking too much. Someone opens a dashboard, adjusts a fraud model threshold, maybe tweaks a few fraud rules, and suddenly everyone feels like progress is happening. Honestly, not a good look. Not because false positive reduction is the wrong goal. It is abs...

So over the years I’ve had a lot of conversations with Payment Service Providers that wanted to build fraud prevention technology. Not necessarily for their own internal risk controls. That would almost be too obvious. What they really wanted was to offer fraud prevention software as a value-added service to their merchants. Honestly, I get it. Payment fraud prevention can help PSPs differentiate,...

Every few years our industry rediscovers the same debate: should fraud and cybersecurity teams actually sit together? And honestly, usually both sides hate the idea immediately. Not because they dislike each other. Mostly because both teams are already overwhelmed and nobody wants another meeting. But over the last couple of years, something changed. The signals started converging. Credential stuf...

Honestly, most fraud teams have no idea how many good users they are actually blocking. Ask someone for their chargeback data and you’ll usually get a very precise answer. Ask how many legitimate customers were declined by mistake and suddenly things get a lot less scientific. Usually somewhere between a shrug and “probably not many.” Not a great sign. False positive fraud detection is fundamental...

Back in 2009, when I started working in fraud prevention at PayPal, we had this saying: “Good people leave tracks.” And honestly, that was kind of the whole job. Fraudsters tried to erase themselves. Fake identities, disposable emails, wiped browser cookies, brand-new accounts. Legitimate users, meanwhile, usually left digital breadcrumbs everywhere because nobody really thought much about online...

A year and a half ago, I wrote that for around 150 bucks, anyone could buy a service on the dark web that bypassed a KYC vendor. People were shocked. Today? Honestly, not so much. Now the threat is cheaper, faster, and harder to spot. Document checks can be bypassed. Selfies can be bypassed. Even 3D liveness checks, the ones that looked unbeatable not that long ago, can be bypassed. Not a good loo...

This episode is a bit of a full-circle moment. Years ago, Matt Vega interviewed me on one of my first podcast appearances. And now, somehow, here we are, roles reversed, with Matt joining me for the first full interview episode of The Saturday Fraud Strategist. Honestly, not a bad way to start. In this episode, Matt and I talk about what it actually takes to build real-time fraud prevention from z...

In this episode, I start with a slightly strange moment at the Mastercard offices. I was catching up with someone I know and he told me I had started pushing a new narrative. Okay. Apparently, the narrative was that rules are better than AI. Honestly, I get why it looked that way. I talk about rules vs AI in fraud prevention quite a bit. But that is not really the point. The point is control. AI f...

I wanted to take a step back and talk about something a bit more personal, but also very relevant to how I think about fraud prevention strategy. It’s been six months since I joined Sardine. And I figured it makes sense to explain how I got here, because honestly, the decision wasn’t hard, but it wasn’t simple either. This isn’t just about changing roles. It’s about moving from fraud prevention co...

A few months ago, I woke up registered on a dating app. I'm in a 13-year relationship. I did not sign up. Someone used my email to create a profile on Coffee Meets Bagel. When the platform froze the account, the scammers opened another one. Same email. Same details. Instantly. By the third account, customer support still hadn't replied. What starts as fake dating profiles doesn't stay there. They...

Fraud strategy that's actually practical. 16 years of experience, zero fluff, one actionable takeaway every episode. Chen Zamir goes deep on fraud strategy at the intersection of business growth, customer experience, and risk management. No news digests, no vendor pitches, no recycled content. Just real talk for fraud professionals, product managers, and executives who want to think sharper about...