March 4, 2025 • 9 mins
In a previous episode of The Unshakeables, Ben spoke with Kilee Nickels of Nickel & Suede about a near $20,000 scam. In this bonus episode, Ben continues his conversation with Darius Kingsley, head of banking practices at JP Morgan Chase, to discuss the growing threats of fraud targeting businesses. Darius shares insights on evolving scam tactics and offers practical advice on how businesses can stay vigilant and protected.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Ruby
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi everyone, it's Ben. On the last episode of our show,
we talked to Kilee Nickels about her company, Nickel and Suede.
If you haven't heard that episode, please go back and
take a listen. She was almost scammed out of twenty
thousand dollars and unfortunately, fraud, especially targeting businesses, is something
that happens far too often. In this episode, I invited
(00:28):
Darius Kingsley, head of banking Practices at JP Morgan Chase,
to share his expertise on the topic. The conversation was
much longer than what you hear in the episode, though,
and Darius is a wealth of information, so we decided
to devote a mini segment to my conversation with him. Darius,
thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Thanks, Ben, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
So we wanted to bring you in because the story
that we just heard from Kilee that's all too common, sadly,
and one that you see a lot of in what
you do. So could you talk to us a little
bit about what you do and why you're close to
issues like this.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Thanks Ben. So in my role as head of banking practices,
I spend a lot of time on fraud and scams,
and in particular fraudsters and scammers that are hitting our consumers.
They target often the more vulnerable populations. You see them
targeting elder and also the youth very heavily. But of
course everyone is targeted, and small business owners are these
(01:25):
days probably more targeted than ever, and so I work
very closely with our risk teams. I visit our branches.
I spend a lot of time talking not just with
our consumer bankers who help individual customers, but also our
small business bankers and try to hear from them the
stories and the problems that they're experiencing when they have
customers who come in who have fallen prey to a scam,
(01:46):
or maybe they've just sent a wire and they're not
really sure where it went and they need help, And
so I help try to piece together all of these things.
And I'm also working even more closely than ever with government,
particularly with the DOJ and the FTC, really trying to
wrap our arms around it, not just as a bank,
but even as an industry, trying to help reduce the
(02:06):
number of these scams.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So it sounds like Kilee's company fell for one of
these classic straightforward kind of scams. So what are the
most common types of scams that you see. Tell people
sort of what you're seeing out there in the ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, unfortunately, that's right. I mean, look, small business owners
are busy, You have a lot of things going on.
You hire vendors or help, and you assume and hope
they're doing the right thing, and usually they always are
and will point out. One thing Kilee did right was
soon as she caught it, she contacted the bank. A
lot of people sit on this. You probably have your
business banker contact information, call them immediately go to the
(02:44):
branch if you can. The sooner you act, the better
the chance of stopping the wire. For business owners, you're
really seeing a lot of the business email compromise scam.
It's really easy these days to fake an email and
it looks just like someone that you use to transacting with,
and they'll often ask you for payment details, for account details,
(03:06):
other ones that we see businesses fall for phony invoices.
So it's very easy as well these days, much easier
than ever to copy in invoice. You can change an
invoice that a vendor sends, change the wiring instructions on it,
change the payment information on it, and it looks completely realistic.
That's a very common one. Stolen identity that always remains
(03:26):
a really big one.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And what about some of the more sophisticated ones. I mean,
we read a lot now about pretty elaborate scams where
people have been really doing deep research and people get
compromised in other ways emotionally, logistically and otherwise.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah, this is someone's job. Unfortunately, this is what people
do full time, so they do the research. And of
course there's tons of information out there about us, right,
there's lots of information about us personally. But if you're
a small business, particularly if you're a consumer facing small business,
you probably have all sorts of website pages up there,
including past ones. The scammers can very quickly go on LinkedIn,
(04:06):
they can go on social media, they can figure out
who all your employees are, they can figure out who's
in charge of the accounts and finances tech, if anyone
is monitoring your cyber they can learn who your vendors are.
And it's very hard, as you probably notice, scrub a
lot of that from the Internet.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, a lot of our small business clients don't want to.
I mean, these are small businesses they're trying to build
up their reputation. They're trying to build up a client base.
They need people to be able to find them.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
That's why I think it's important to couple that awareness
that you have a public facing persona you have to
in order to run your business, but it is also
going to open you up to more targeting on a
personal side. For individuals, you see these romance scams or
what we call also pig butchering, which are basically like
investments or crypto scams. It can take months even years
(04:55):
to play out, but the payoffs are huge. Literally can
deplete someone's entire life savings millions of dollars. But this
shows the level of targeting that scammers and fraudsters will bring.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Let's talk about some of the things that people can
do about it.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
There is a lot. I'd start with cyber hygiene. I mean,
first of all, even within your business, you should all
talk about it. Everyone should be aware that you're a target.
Talk about it with all of your employees. Right. Sure,
not all businesses have the resources to have a full
cyber program, but there's a lot of some fairly basic
things you can do. These include verifying all of your invoices.
(05:32):
You can regularly monitor your bank accounts, if you can
establish dual custody, to have an extra set of eyes
on payments, see if you can have maybe someone else
approving extra large purchases. In particular, The last thing I'll
say and answer to your question is have a plan.
I think a lot of people personally never believe that
they'll fall for a scammer fraud. Most businesses should be
(05:55):
thinking about a resiliency plan in general, like what happens
if they can open, if they're you know, climate issue,
whatever it is. It's not a question of if, assume.
It's more a question of when, and have a plan
for what you will do, Who you will contact, Who
at your financial institution or institutions you will contact if
you believe that there is a fraud or you may
(06:16):
have made an erroneous payment.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Can you talk a little bit about what banks, like us,
but other banks in general, are doing now to protect
people from these scams, because you know, we can't be
accountable for everything that happens in the world, but we
can certainly help.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So we are constantly monitoring all the various frauds and
the scams out there, and they're constantly changing. We inform
a lot of our risk rules, our risk rolls are
kind of dynamic, and we're always trying to sort of
update them and follow and block payments that don't look right.
But a very large part of it as well is education.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Last thing I want to talk about is new technology
on the scene, because I could see some of these
scams getting even more sophisticated. But also I could imagine
a world where it gives you tools to protect yourself
that didn't exist before.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Unfortunately, we're seeing the use of AI tools more and more,
and so you can think about it in a couple
different ways. The AI tools enable you to clone invoices,
clone websites a lot more effectively than we used to.
Right on a personal level, we've all seen it. You know,
the days of the old poorly written Nigerian print scam
(07:20):
like those are kind of laughably funny. Today you get
emails that look exactly like a major online retailer. They're
like perfect. The other place they're using AI tools that
we're seeing is in voice. So back to that. You
get a phone call from a vendor, it's someone that
you used to, it's going to sound just like them
because you can run your own voice through one of
these AI clones, and it's going to sound exactly like
(07:42):
someone you used to talking to on a personal level.
You may have seen it or heard of it with
an infamous grandparent scam of getting your call. Today people
are getting calls from their grandchild who's in jail and
in trouble, and it sounds exactly like their grandchild because
they're running it through these AI tools. Similarly, you can
do that with people that you do business with, so
be careful of who you're talking with on the other phone.
(08:03):
Are very wary of random calls that come up, especially
ones that have urgency or require you to act very quickly.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Do you think we can expect tools to come online
to help people prevent that? So will there be AI
detection tools and other things that come out into the marketplace.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Absolutely. I mean so we're already using a lot of
AI and machine learning, and the other thing we're doing
is we're taking a lot more time to really work
with government and with other entities, major retailers, the social
media companies. This is going to be something I think
you'll see publicly more and more in twenty five. You've
already seen some of it and just really trying to
(08:43):
get our arms around the tools that these scammers use
to contact our customers.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Well, be aware, make a plan exactly. Thanks very much, Darius,
it's great to have you on the show.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Thanks, Ben, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Thank you for listening. Fraud and scams can come from anywhere,
so please stay vigilant and have protocols in place for
your business to make sure you and your business stay safe.
I'm Ben Walter and this is the Unshakeables from Chase
for Business and Ruby Studio for iHeartMedia. We'll see you
back here soon.
Ruby
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hi everyone, it's Ben. On the last episode of our show,
we talked to Kilee Nickels about her company, Nickel and Suede.
If you haven't heard that episode, please go back and
take a listen. She was almost scammed out of twenty
thousand dollars and unfortunately, fraud, especially targeting businesses, is something
that happens far too often. In this episode, I invited
(00:28):
Darius Kingsley, head of banking Practices at JP Morgan Chase,
to share his expertise on the topic. The conversation was
much longer than what you hear in the episode, though,
and Darius is a wealth of information, so we decided
to devote a mini segment to my conversation with him. Darius,
thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Thanks, Ben, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
So we wanted to bring you in because the story
that we just heard from Kilee that's all too common, sadly,
and one that you see a lot of in what
you do. So could you talk to us a little
bit about what you do and why you're close to
issues like this.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Thanks Ben. So in my role as head of banking practices,
I spend a lot of time on fraud and scams,
and in particular fraudsters and scammers that are hitting our consumers.
They target often the more vulnerable populations. You see them
targeting elder and also the youth very heavily. But of
course everyone is targeted, and small business owners are these
(01:25):
days probably more targeted than ever, and so I work
very closely with our risk teams. I visit our branches.
I spend a lot of time talking not just with
our consumer bankers who help individual customers, but also our
small business bankers and try to hear from them the
stories and the problems that they're experiencing when they have
customers who come in who have fallen prey to a scam,
(01:46):
or maybe they've just sent a wire and they're not
really sure where it went and they need help, And
so I help try to piece together all of these things.
And I'm also working even more closely than ever with government,
particularly with the DOJ and the FTC, really trying to
wrap our arms around it, not just as a bank,
but even as an industry, trying to help reduce the
(02:06):
number of these scams.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So it sounds like Kilee's company fell for one of
these classic straightforward kind of scams. So what are the
most common types of scams that you see. Tell people
sort of what you're seeing out there in the ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, unfortunately, that's right. I mean, look, small business owners
are busy, You have a lot of things going on.
You hire vendors or help, and you assume and hope
they're doing the right thing, and usually they always are
and will point out. One thing Kilee did right was
soon as she caught it, she contacted the bank. A
lot of people sit on this. You probably have your
business banker contact information, call them immediately go to the
(02:44):
branch if you can. The sooner you act, the better
the chance of stopping the wire. For business owners, you're
really seeing a lot of the business email compromise scam.
It's really easy these days to fake an email and
it looks just like someone that you use to transacting with,
and they'll often ask you for payment details, for account details,
(03:06):
other ones that we see businesses fall for phony invoices.
So it's very easy as well these days, much easier
than ever to copy in invoice. You can change an
invoice that a vendor sends, change the wiring instructions on it,
change the payment information on it, and it looks completely realistic.
That's a very common one. Stolen identity that always remains
(03:26):
a really big one.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And what about some of the more sophisticated ones. I mean,
we read a lot now about pretty elaborate scams where
people have been really doing deep research and people get
compromised in other ways emotionally, logistically and otherwise.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah, this is someone's job. Unfortunately, this is what people
do full time, so they do the research. And of
course there's tons of information out there about us, right,
there's lots of information about us personally. But if you're
a small business, particularly if you're a consumer facing small business,
you probably have all sorts of website pages up there,
including past ones. The scammers can very quickly go on LinkedIn,
(04:06):
they can go on social media, they can figure out
who all your employees are, they can figure out who's
in charge of the accounts and finances tech, if anyone
is monitoring your cyber they can learn who your vendors are.
And it's very hard, as you probably notice, scrub a
lot of that from the Internet.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, a lot of our small business clients don't want to.
I mean, these are small businesses they're trying to build
up their reputation. They're trying to build up a client base.
They need people to be able to find them.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
That's why I think it's important to couple that awareness
that you have a public facing persona you have to
in order to run your business, but it is also
going to open you up to more targeting on a
personal side. For individuals, you see these romance scams or
what we call also pig butchering, which are basically like
investments or crypto scams. It can take months even years
(04:55):
to play out, but the payoffs are huge. Literally can
deplete someone's entire life savings millions of dollars. But this
shows the level of targeting that scammers and fraudsters will bring.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Let's talk about some of the things that people can
do about it.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
There is a lot. I'd start with cyber hygiene. I mean,
first of all, even within your business, you should all
talk about it. Everyone should be aware that you're a target.
Talk about it with all of your employees. Right. Sure,
not all businesses have the resources to have a full
cyber program, but there's a lot of some fairly basic
things you can do. These include verifying all of your invoices.
(05:32):
You can regularly monitor your bank accounts, if you can
establish dual custody, to have an extra set of eyes
on payments, see if you can have maybe someone else
approving extra large purchases. In particular, The last thing I'll
say and answer to your question is have a plan.
I think a lot of people personally never believe that
they'll fall for a scammer fraud. Most businesses should be
(05:55):
thinking about a resiliency plan in general, like what happens
if they can open, if they're you know, climate issue,
whatever it is. It's not a question of if, assume.
It's more a question of when, and have a plan
for what you will do, Who you will contact, Who
at your financial institution or institutions you will contact if
you believe that there is a fraud or you may
(06:16):
have made an erroneous payment.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Can you talk a little bit about what banks, like us,
but other banks in general, are doing now to protect
people from these scams, because you know, we can't be
accountable for everything that happens in the world, but we
can certainly help.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So we are constantly monitoring all the various frauds and
the scams out there, and they're constantly changing. We inform
a lot of our risk rules, our risk rolls are
kind of dynamic, and we're always trying to sort of
update them and follow and block payments that don't look right.
But a very large part of it as well is education.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Last thing I want to talk about is new technology
on the scene, because I could see some of these
scams getting even more sophisticated. But also I could imagine
a world where it gives you tools to protect yourself
that didn't exist before.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Unfortunately, we're seeing the use of AI tools more and more,
and so you can think about it in a couple
different ways. The AI tools enable you to clone invoices,
clone websites a lot more effectively than we used to.
Right on a personal level, we've all seen it. You know,
the days of the old poorly written Nigerian print scam
(07:20):
like those are kind of laughably funny. Today you get
emails that look exactly like a major online retailer. They're
like perfect. The other place they're using AI tools that
we're seeing is in voice. So back to that. You
get a phone call from a vendor, it's someone that
you used to, it's going to sound just like them
because you can run your own voice through one of
these AI clones, and it's going to sound exactly like
(07:42):
someone you used to talking to on a personal level.
You may have seen it or heard of it with
an infamous grandparent scam of getting your call. Today people
are getting calls from their grandchild who's in jail and
in trouble, and it sounds exactly like their grandchild because
they're running it through these AI tools. Similarly, you can
do that with people that you do business with, so
be careful of who you're talking with on the other phone.
(08:03):
Are very wary of random calls that come up, especially
ones that have urgency or require you to act very quickly.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Do you think we can expect tools to come online
to help people prevent that? So will there be AI
detection tools and other things that come out into the marketplace.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Absolutely. I mean so we're already using a lot of
AI and machine learning, and the other thing we're doing
is we're taking a lot more time to really work
with government and with other entities, major retailers, the social
media companies. This is going to be something I think
you'll see publicly more and more in twenty five. You've
already seen some of it and just really trying to
(08:43):
get our arms around the tools that these scammers use
to contact our customers.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Well, be aware, make a plan exactly. Thanks very much, Darius,
it's great to have you on the show.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Thanks, Ben, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Thank you for listening. Fraud and scams can come from anywhere,
so please stay vigilant and have protocols in place for
your business to make sure you and your business stay safe.
I'm Ben Walter and this is the Unshakeables from Chase
for Business and Ruby Studio for iHeartMedia. We'll see you
back here soon.
Hosts And Creators
Ben Walter
Kathleen Griffith
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