Practical Fraud Prevention

Chapter 24. Fraud, Fraud Prevention, and the Future

We shall overcome…

People’s Songs, Bulletin No. 3¹

An old Israeli joke, written for a popular 1976 film Halfon Hill Doesn’t Answer, comes to mind whenever one tries to interview a fraud fighter about their work. The setting of the joke is a small Israeli military reserve force, stranded in the middle of the desert, struck by sun and boredom. When a high-ranking officer tries to hold an inspection of their vigilance, he asks an approximately 50-year-old veteran to describe what he would do if he saw the Egyptian army approaching (the film predates the Egypt–Israel peace treaty of 1979). The soldier replies that if he sees the Egyptians, “We would do the same thing as we did in 1956.” To this the officer replies, “What did you do in 1956?” and the soldier answers, “Oh, the same thing we did in 1948.” “What did you do in 1948?” demands the officer. The soldier replies, “It was 30 years ago…who can remember?”

Apart from the fun chance to butcher a joke with translation, it’s helpful to remind people of this popular joke when they’re being asked about their fraud prevention methodologies. So many risk analytics methodologies have been shaped by decades of playing “cat and mouse” (or, to be more accurate, “cops and robbers”) with fraudsters. So many underlying working theories have been buried in years of practice that teams are reluctant to question a piece of heuristic or code in their system, even if it seems to be obsolete.