Alex Wood

What leads someone down the path of becoming a fraudster? In this speech Alex Wood talks openly on his early years and what led him from a law-abiding life to committing increasingly serious financial crimes. Alex discusses his flawed decision making processes and speaks candidly about how he laundered the proceeds of his offences providing vital insights into how financial institutions can fight back. Alex offers also important insights into how AI is being used by criminal gangs to automate financial crime, with devastating effect, and offers advice on how this can be combatted

In this talk Alex Wood starts with the basics, explaining what a Mule Account is and how they can become a central piece of a fraudster’s toolkit. The people relinquishing control of the accounts are almost always vulnerable in some way and are being cruelly exploited by criminals. Alex helps clients to understand the ways in which the accounts are taken over and how financial organisations can learn to detect such accounts PRIOR to them receiving the proceeds of crime.

Depending on who you ask, Artificial Intelligence is either a force for good or for evil. Financial institutions are able to use Generative AI to fight back against fraudsters but only if they fully understand exactly how criminals themselves are utilising AI as a means to automate financial crime and execute ‘zero touch’ fraud, including by using Deepfake clones. In this speech Alex Wood offers insights into how criminals are utilising AI for their own means and how financial institutions can combat against it.

In an increasingly cashless society, a fraudster’s ability to properly launder money into digital and purportedly legitimate assets is imperative. In this talk, Alex Wood explains how underground banking networks such as Hawala and Daigou enable the immediate global dissipation of assets, and the potentially devastating consequences it can bring (such as the inadvertent funding of terrorism) and how these networks also allow for the purportedly legitimate accumulation of high value assets back in the UK.

It is imperative that the Counter Fraud Profession has a strong understanding of the extent to which fraudsters deploy social engineering in order to perpetrate their offences. Whether by impersonating others (perhaps royalty, police or bank staff) or by gently and subtly manipulating conversations in order to build false trust with a victim (as we so often see in romance fraud). By educating the public to these heartless techniques, we can ‘Protect and Prevent’.

The actions of a fraudster have often been considered by reference to the Fraud Triangle (incentive, opportunity, rationalisation). However, in modern society, the Fraud Triangle is outdated and unhelpful. In this talk Alex Wood draws on his own lived experience to explain how Fraud is now being fuelled by bad actors who show traits of psychopathy and religious ideology, amongst other things.