Confessions of a Fraud Analyst
Being a fraud analyst certainly comes with its share of ups and downs. And stories. We asked some fraud analysts we know to share a funny, odd, or memorable things that happened in their day-to-day work. Got one to share? Send it our way! (We won’t use your name…)
“During manual review, we used to request that customers send us a photo of their payment instrument (with the card number obscured) and a driver’s license. One day we received a response from a customer who was clearly confused. They had emailed us with a photo of several dollar bills and coins as their “proof of payment.” …. Womp womp.”
“I worked at a major social networking site, and we occasionally had to call or request information from people – including celebrities – to verify their true identities. We usually went in assuming it was a fake account, but sometimes it wasn’t. It was a surreal feeling to have to ask a pop star or actor to confirm it was really their account.”
“We occasionally had to ask people — including celebrities — for verification when they were making high dollar amount purchases. Even if I was pretty sure it was them, I still wanted to use verification as an excuse to talk to them. I did that maybe twice.”
“When I first started doing fraud review, I didn’t have a great grasp on the flaws of IP connection, which led me to cancel a large number of donations from a prominent animation company. Whoops!”
“Once we had to investigate an executive at our company for friendly fraud chargebacks. It turned out someone in his family had made some unauthorized purchases. At first, he refused to believe it, so we had to try to sensitively explain our suspicions …without offending him. It was pretty uncomfortable.”
“When we discovered our first big account takeover attack, we called the investigation, crackdown, and cleanup Operation Skyfall. We played Adele on repeat all day to get us through it.”
“Every now and then, I had to deal with friendly fraud chargebacks and ask merchants to provide evidence as to why the charge should stand. There was one merchant who sold tickets to a prom-type dance and in order to prove that the customers attended the event, sent various prom photo-type shots as chargeback evidence. I did not deem that sufficient enough to take to the bank…”
