Danger! 4 Award-Winning Videos Raise Scam Awareness

Shocking news from the Federal Trade Commission has shown that losses due to fraud in the US rose by 25% in 2024 to $12.5 billion. Those statistics only account for cases reported to ReportFraud.ftc.gov; because many cases don’t get reported, the true size of the issue is likely even bigger.

What’s clear is that everyone has a role to play in fraud prevention, including regulators, industry bodies, financial institutions, social media and technology platforms, solution providers and, of course, consumers.

While we often believe that the victims of scams are older people who may not be digitally savvy, the truth is anyone can fall for a persuasive fraudster. Romance, crypto-currency and bank impersonation fraud don’t discriminate based on age. Therefore, consumer awareness across all demographics is critical for enabling everyone to spot and avoid scams of all types.

With this in mind, I was happy to be a judge for Nacha and The Payment Innovation Alliance's Spotlight! Payments Video Challenge. The competition invited people to produce compelling videos of 60 seconds or less that fit within the contest theme of “Stand Against Scammers.” This competition was decided by a combination of public voting and the votes of an expert panel; one award was determined solely by members of the Payments Innovation Alliance.

The standard was high, but the submissions didn’t disappoint. Many entries were innovative and leveraged both shock and humour to drive the message home that we must all be “scam-smart.” Ultimately, the prizes went to the following four fantastic videos.

Danger of Deep Fakes

In first place, Austin Harris educated us all on the danger of deep fakes and how difficult they can be to spot. The presenter, a senior fraud analyst named Ron, had some great advice for spotting deep fakes.

How to Avoid Ghost Jobs

Ruqayah Baig’s second-place entry was focused on the issue of fake job postings, teaching us how to avoid ghost jobs by staying alert to:

·      Suspicious texts or emails that appear to be from companies you didn’t apply to.

·      Roles which are too good to be true, or where a Google search doesn’t find information about the company.

·      Applications in which you’re asked for fees or too much personal information.

STOP a Scam

In third place, Jethro Casinos’ “Breaking News” video introduced the acronym “STOP”:

·      S – Stay away from unknown links

·      T – Trust your gut feeling

·      O – Operate your own device

·      P – People you’ve never met are strangers.

It’s a simple but effective way of staying alert and avoiding possible fraudsters.

Puppies and Payment Risks

The sponsors’ choice award went to Catherine Tapling for her film, “Duplicitous Puppers,” starring a couple of really cute dogs. Catherine explored how things aren’t always what they seem. There was strong advice about taking care when making payments – after all, you don’t want to find yourself with a velociraptor instead of a dog!

Thank you to all the entrants to the competition, and to Nacha and The Payments Innovation Alliance for organizing this initiative.  FICO was proud to be involved with the contest, which produced films that are both fun and sobering. And for those of you who didn’t get a chance to compete this year, the 2025 competition is expected to start again this summer—check back around July.

How FICO Helps to Stop Scams

• Review the FICO 2024 Global Scams Impact Survey
• Learn more about FICO’s award-winning scam detection model
• Engage in real time with FICO’s Customer Communications Services for Fraud