Hello from FrankonFraud,

This week Socure takes a bite out of synthetics, MLS prowlers target home sellers, ChatGPT has no idea what it’s talking about when it dumbly explains Pig Butchering scams to me, and Cloudflare fights off a record 71 million transaction per second attack.

Let’s take a look at some of the interesting stories for the week.

Up To 5 Million Synthetics May Be Lurking In Bank Accounts

Socure published a very interesting press release with a very telling statistic this week.

According to their research, as many as 3% of the 169 million US Bank accounts may be tied to synthetic identities. That means there may be as many as 5 million synthetic identities being used to do everything from money muling to passing bad checks through the banking system.

Socure is vowing to eliminate those synthetics, and all synthetics by 2026. Will financial institutions be up to the task?

MLS Prowlers Have A New Scam Targeting Home Sellers

A new wrinkle in scams and this one almost worked on an industry veteran fraud fighter named Bryan.

It was that good.

Fraudsters are prowling MLS listings looking for easy targets to pull off utility shut-off scams. It starts with a text to the real estate agent and it can quickly lead to a panicked seller sending funds to a swindler.

ChatGPT Dumbly Tells Me About Pig Butchering Scams

Is ChatGPT really that smart? Sometimes it seems like it is, and other times it really misses the mark.

I asked ChatGPT to explain Pig Butchering Scams to me, and well, its answer really was off the mark.

Record DDOS Attack - Over 71 Million Request A Second Were Attempted

Cloudflare on Monday disclosed that it thwarted a record-breaking distributed DDOS attack that peaked at over 71 million requests per second.

It was so large Cloudflare referred to it as a "hyper-volumetric" DDoS attack.

It's also the largest HTTP DDoS attack reported to date, more than 35% higher than the previous 46 million RPS DDoS attack that Google Cloud mitigated in June 2022.

FICO Reports 500% Increase In Skimming Cases in 2022

Debbie Cobb with FICO released some surprising analysis on the growth in skimming in a recent blog post she authored.

Over 161,000 cards were compromised across 3,000 Financial Institutions last year according to her report.

She says it’s directly related to the number of points of compromise. “Last year, we saw a 452% increase in POCs,”, she says, “illustrating that criminals are back in force and working to put a skimmer in as many locations as possible.”

You gotta wonder why skimming keeps increasing here in the US, even after so many CHIP cards and terminals have been deployed but those credit cards are still a hot commodity!

Auto Executives - Economy Will Worsen, and Fraud Will Rise in 2023

This year, it will be a rocky road for fraud and the general risks in auto lending. Over 35 executives in Auto Lending participated in the 2023 Auto Fraud Survey.

70% of executives believe the economy will worsen, making it a rocky road for originations, and 75% of lenders are bracing themselves for more fraud in 2022 than in 2023.

The Auto Lending Fraud Survey provides a glimpse into how the industry is preparing to tackle fraud this year, with most citing liar loans as their biggest concern. That harkens back to the old mortgage days of 2008.

PJ Rohall Is A Free Agent

Do you know PJ Rohall? He co-founded About Fraud and started the Fraud Fight Club - one of the newest fraud conferences dedicated to fraud fighters. He also sits on the advisory board of MarketPlace Risk and SCARS.

He is an all-around amazing fraud fighter and is on the market looking for new opportunities.

If you’re in the market for a fraud domain expert with an amazing network of thousands, and a solid record of success, Hit the button below and connect with him.

I hope you all have a great week! Keep up the good work, and keep that positive fraud spirit on Level 10!

Best,

FrankonFraud