Technology is greatly amplifying the capabilities of criminals to deceive employees and produce outsized, illegitimate gains.
Commercial crime has come a long way from the days when a masked bandit with a crowbar could pry open a warehouse window and make off with the goods. Nowadays, criminals often rely on remote technology that uses trickery and back-door channels to crack the corporate vault.
“The bank robberies of our great-grandparents are being replaced by AI-generated deepfake frauds,” said Jim Kardaras, senior director, crime and fidelity, management liability and specialty lines at Nationwide.
Some of the criminals’ successes could be movie scripts. Last year, a Hong Kong multinational transferred $25 million to a fraudster who set up a video call that featured deepfakes of the company’s top management. Earlier this year, a Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange lost around $1.5 billion in virtual assets to hackers that exploited a routine transfer of funds and converted the stolen funds to other currencies.
The impact of high-tech crime isn’t limited to large…
