Payments Security

Defining Scams to Improve Fraud Mitigation

To help address the growing and costly problem of scams, the Federal Reserve has established a scams definition and classification work group. This group will leverage the expertise of payments and fraud experts to promote a common understanding of scams and consistent fraud classification.

“In discussions with the industry over the past few years, we’ve heard increased concern about rising fraud losses from scams. However, accurate quantification often is challenging because of multiple operational definitions in use for the term ‘scam’ and a lack of consistency in existing classification approaches to scam types. We hope to make progress toward addressing these challenges.”

Mike Timoney, vice president of payments improvement
Federal Reserve Financial Services

While recognizing the impact of scams across multiple industries, the scams definition and classification work group will focus on scams related to payments. It will use experts’ input and feedback to align on an industry-recommended operational definition of the term “scam” and build a classification structure to help provide a foundation for improved consistency and detail in both fraud classification and reporting of scams. This work can facilitate more timely and detailed fraud measurement, reporting and detection.

Participants in the work group include:

  • Paul Benda, American Bankers Association
  • Jacqueline Blaesi-Freed, U.S. Department of Justice
  • Amanda Compton, Arvest Bank
  • Liam Cooney, Mastercard
  • Jeff Crawford, Citi
  • Jake Emry, NICE Actimize
  • Trace Fooshee, Aite-Novarica Group
  • Ben Geertz, Wells Fargo
  • Mary Gilmeister, Macha
  • Scott Grizzle, The Knoble
  • Jason Kratovil, SentiLink
  • Ryan McNaughton, North American Banking Company
  • Mary Ann Miller, Prove
  • Tim Murphy, Wintrust Financial Corporation
  • Anthony Powell, Truist
  • David Reece, PNC Bank
  • Dan Rooney, FIS Global
  • Chris Schnieper, LexisNexis
  • Maryam Shafique, Navy Federal Credit Union
  • Tracy Stride, Fiserv
  • Marc Trepanier, ACI Worldwide

A second work group to kick off in summer 2023 will concentrate on appropriately sharing information to combat emerging, fast-moving, sophisticated scam schemes more effectively. Join the FedPayments Improvement Community for updates on these efforts.