What The Fraud? by Sumsub was created to make complex fraud threats understandable and genuinely useful. As scams evolve faster than public awareness, both businesses and consumers struggle to keep pace. Our goal was to create an authoritative, accessible resource that demystifies topics such as deepfakes, synthetic identities, and money-mule schemes, translating them into clear, evidence-based guidance.
The podcast brings together leading voices from AI, fintech, crypto, and iGaming to examine real-world cases, emerging tactics, and practical countermeasures. Each episode is designed to go beyond awareness and provide listeners with steps they can apply immediately to reduce risk and strengthen defenses.
Beyond education, the podcast also aims to foster collaboration across industries. Fraud prevention is often fragmented, with different sectors and companies addressing similar challenges in isolation. By bringing together experts from different industries, What The Fraud? helps surface shared patterns, transferable lessons, and approaches that scale.
Ultimately, the mission of What The Fraud? is to equip professionals and everyday users with the knowledge and confidence to recognize fraud early and prevent it effectively.
Launched in 2024, the first two seasons established What The Fraud? as an accessible, expert-led podcast on digital fraud. In 2025, Season 3 marked a shift from broad education to industry-specific investigations, including our first live, on-site recordings at Money20/20 in Amsterdam to capture insights directly from fintech leaders in the moment.
Season 4 builds on that evolution by deepening the content focus and expanding the live format. It focuses on trust, agentic AI, and the future of fraud prevention, while staying anchored in practical signals of what’s next and how to stay ahead of fast-changing threats. At the same time, we scaled live recording to additional global events, including Money20/20 Las Vegas (the largest fintech conference), the WTF Summit in Singapore (Sumsub’s fraud-focused flagship event), and ICE Barcelona (the largest iGaming event).
The podcast targets two core audience segments:
Guest selection was central to execution. We sourced senior compliance specialists, fraud experts, and academics across regions and industries. Pre-interviews ensured each episode had a defined direction and highlighted each guest's unique expertise.
Three recurring execution elements help the show deliver consistently:
1. A recurring segment that strengthens audience connection (Season 2 onward). We introduced five quick-fire questions at the end of each episode to make expert voices more relatable and memorable. It also reinforces a core message: anyone can be targeted, and fraud is never the victim’s fault. For listeners, it offers a practical window into how fraud professionals think about risk, judgment, and trade-offs.
2. Live, event-based episodes that capture the ecosystem in real time (Season 3 onward). Recording at major industry events (Money20/20, WTF Summit, ICE – and more to come) enabled conversations with multiple global leaders on payments, crypto fraud, compliance, AI-driven attacks, and AML. On-site production helps capture timely insights, surface cross-industry patterns, and reflect what practitioners are dealing with right now.
3. An evolving visual identity aligned with the threat landscape. Each season’s design evolves to reflect how fraud tactics change over time, and how prevention adapts in response. This keeps the brand current and reinforces the show’s focus on emerging risks and practical countermeasures.
Episodes are distributed across all major audio platforms, including Castbox, Apple Podcasts and Spotify, YouTube, and The Sumsuber, our own media, with support on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and X, as well as through partners and industry associations. This omnichannel model ensures that content reaches specialised practitioners as well as the broader public.
By combining expert insights, a recurring and engaging format, and wide-reach distribution, What The Fraud? has grown into a trusted educational resource – one that makes complex fraud topics understandable while building an active community united around digital safety.
What The Fraud? has met its objectives. Since launch, the podcast has surpassed its listening targets across major audio platforms and continues to grow, reaching a global audience and showing that specialised fraud content can find broad traction when it’s clear and practical.
Introducing live recordings at Money20/20, the WTF Summit, and ICE helped widen the range of perspectives on the show and strengthened its standing as a serious forum for forward-looking fraud discussions. Guests have included leaders from HSBC Innovation Banking, ING, the UK Gambling Commission, Nium, MoneyGram, Nubank, Gusto, Coinbase, and others. One of the clearest signs of momentum has been the shift from primarily outbound guest outreach to increasing inbound interest. We also see repeat engagement, with past guests returning for related initiatives such as webinars, educational content, articles, and joint research.
Recent seasons have featured the Head of Digital Identity at London Stock Exchange Group, former fraudsters now working in cybersecurity, the prosecutor behind Operation Shamrock, fraud prevention and risk leaders from Wise and Glovo, the Vice President of Global Intelligence at Coinbase, and a former president of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), among others.
Overall, the results suggest the podcast has done more than inform and engage listeners. It has helped position Sumsub as a credible cross-industry voice on digital trust and fraud prevention, and the show has increasingly functioned as a repeatable learning channel and community touchpoint for people building safer digital products.
