Why banana bread is the solution to the world's fraud problem

Part of it, anyway

By any measure you can find, fraud is soaring in the U.S. and around the world. I spent an hour on WHYY radio recently discussing the causes for this, but I can boil it down to one concept: big, uncaring companies have dehumanized customers and employees alike, creating a perfect playground for criminal mischief.

I write a lot of stories that reveal how much systems let people down and set them up to be victims of crimes. You’ll often hear me lament that big tech companies or financial institutions don’t do more to stop crimes.

Today, I have a different story to tell at The Perfect Scam podcast. It’s about a crime that *almost* happened, but didn’t -- thanks in large part to well-trained bank employees who followed a well-designed system...with care. But there’s another important element to this near-miss crime that plays a huge role: It happened in a small community, at a small bank, where employees had a personal connection to the victim. Like this:

“The young man who is an assistant manager up there went to high school with at least one of my grandsons.”

And this:

“The lady at the bank, the one who was the person who called me initially, my son had a coffee truck in Rogersville for about a year and a half, and this bank manager loved his coffee. So she had come through his line so many times, and so knew me because of that.”

It’s human nature: When you know someone, or you know someone you know will know someone, you are far more likely to step in and ask questions when something seems amiss. After all, who could go to bed at night knowing they helped criminals steal $25,000 from an 83-year-old woman who is a pillar of the community?

I realize I’m telling this story upside down, giving you the punchline without the setup. That’s because the punchline *is* the story here. It’s the only part of this story that is a surprise. The rest follows an all-too-familiar refrain. Listen for yourself by clicking here. But here’s the setup.

Samuel, the would-be victim, has lived in a small town outside Springfield, Mo., for most of her 83 years. She got a menacing call from someone claiming he was from a federal agency investigating a crime, and he needed her help. Many calls later, Samuel was manipulated into a bank visit where she would ask for $25,000 to be wired to a nonexistent company. But the teller and manager asked so many questions that Samuel left without the money and headed for another branch. By the time she got there, the bank had already put an alert on her account, and tellers put up multiple speed bumps. Ditto for branch No. 3. Critically, bank employees did this with kindness, not dismissiveness or ageism, because the criminal had warned Samuel that a bank employee was “in on it.” As I’ve written elsewhere, rudeness only pushes victims into the arms of criminals, who are very good at sounding compassionate.

The bank also thoughtfully notified Samuel’s children, who are named on her account. The kids got mom off the phone with the criminal, got her home, and eventually persuaded her that she was talking to a criminal. The whole episode was over in a couple of days, and the family didn’t lose a dime.

As a show of thanks, Samuel made banana bread and took some to each bank employee who played a role in foiling the crime.

I love a happy ending. And I love banana bread. I’m only half kidding when I suggest in this episode that baked goods are the answer to America’s fraud problems. What I’m suggesting, of course, is that the human touch is missing from most cybersecurity initiatives. We spend billions on software...we’re calling it AI now.... but we overlook the front-line workers who are often the difference between disaster and a close call.

I realize Linda Samuel’s story has a unique set of circumstances. Many of us don’t live in a town where we can walk or quickly drive to a small, community bank. Years of industry consolidation have ensured that. In many cases, we only have a choice of one or two gigantic banks. This is a mistake, and if you’re curious about the problem of hyper-consolidation and monopoly power, I’d invite you to visit the American Economic Liberties Project and the work of Matt Stoller, author of the “BIG” Substack newsletter.

For now, suffice to say it’s unlikely Linda Samuel’s story would have had the same ending if her money had been parked at Bank of Gigantica.

I do know many, many cybersecurity workers at these large institutions who care a lot about fraud, and often write code that stops crimes. When I have a chance to speak to tech worker audiences, I often remind them that no firefighter wins an award for a house fire that is stopped because a fire inspection forced a safety upgrade -- the work these individuals do can be just as invisible and thankless, so I thank them for it.

But I’ll repeat myself -- poor customer service is our greatest cybersecurity vulnerability. This story makes that point by showing the alternative: good customer service can be our best crime-fighting tool.

We’re never going to get a handle on fraud unless banana bread, once again, is part of the equation. Know Your Customer shouldn’t be a check box on a compliance form. It should be standard operating procedure. And it’s worth the investment.

Below I’ve pasted a partial transcript from this week’s episode, but I hope you’ll listen to it. Linda and her kids are perfectly charming, and really, ‘tis the season for a happy ending. Click here to listen.

-------------PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT--------------------

[00:06:47] Bob: But Linda does have a strong sense of civic duty, and she wants to do anything she can to help catch the criminals. So she makes a plan to get the cash she needs, and since she isn’t supposed to tell anyone, she knows she can’t go to her local bank branch where everyone seems to know her, and would probably start asking questions, so she drives across town following Alex’s instruction which have changed a bit. Now he wants Linda to wire that $25,000. But when Linda tries to wire the money, well there’s a problem.

[00:07:22] Linda Samuel: When I asked for the money up there, the teller who was taking care of me that day said, “Well I need to get my manager on that.” She was fairly new and, and she said, “I need to get my manager.”

[00:07:34] Bob: And then, well someone at this branch does recognize Linda and does start to ask questions.

[00:07:41] Linda Samuel: And the young man who is an assistant manager up there went to high school with at least one of my grandsons.

[00:07:49] Bob: Oh wow.

[00:07:50] Linda Samuel: He went through the fact that they needed to uh, just you know no, he said, “We can’t, we can’t not give you the money because it is your money. But,” he said, “we do need to know why you’re asking for it.”

[00:08:04] Bob: And he talks with Linda for a while.

[00:08:07] Linda Samuel: He said, “We’ve been having a lot of scams and they seem to target people in the older age range.” So he said, “We do frequent training on how to deal with this.”

[00:08:21] Bob: He even takes a moment to research the place Alex told Linda to send her money to.

[00:08:26] Linda Samuel: He couldn’t find it. And he said, “Well, I just looked this up on the computer that I use here at work, so,” he said, “when I get home tonight, I’ll get on my personal computer and see if I can do some further checking, and if I find anything I’ll call you back.”

[00:08:43] Bob: But Linda isn’t discouraged. Remember, Alex had told her an employee at the bank might be in on it, and she really does want to help catch the criminal. So when she doesn’t hear back from the bank manager by the next morning, she heads to a different branch. Alex tells her to have a story ready in case anyone asks questions. But at this second branch, too, the teller puts up roadblocks.

[00:09:07] Linda Samuel: She said, “Now we can’t not give you your money, but we need,” said, “what, what are you planning to do with it?” And you know, I know that my dad and my, and my husband always had told me that I couldn’t tell a lie because my face would give me away. So I just kind of hum-hawed around and, and said, “Well, uh, it’s to help purchase inventory.”

[00:09:34] Bob: That teller also tells Linda that there are a lot of scams going on and starts asking a lot of questions. And eventually, Linda leaves that branch empty-handed too. Now, Alex, who’s been on the phone with Linda pretty much the whole time, tells her to go to a third branch. But this time she should only ask for $15,000.

[00:09:55] Bob: Up to this point you hadn’t said anything to your kids and that, that felt pretty strange to you, right?

[00:09:59] Linda Samuel: Right, and, and it felt strange to them too because particularly since their dad passed away, I’ve checked with them on a lot of things that I, involved any money transactions of any size at all. Uh, so it felt very strange.

[00:10:18] Bob: So feeling strange, she walks into another branch of her bank, and...

[00:10:24] Linda Samuel: When I got over and walked in, she had said they didn’t have that much cash on hand so that they couldn’t go ahead and do that. And she also said that they thought it was a scam. So by this time, I just thanked her kindly and went back to my car and just had gotten back to my car and was trying to think, what do I do next, and the phone rang.

[00:10:50] Bob: The phone rings, and it’s Dwight, her son. But she’s on the phone with Alex so she can’t answer right away. Eventually, she calls him back.

[00:11:01] Linda Samuel: He said, “Mom, where are you and what are you doing?” He said, “Dodi and I are sitting here at the kitchen table. You need to get home. Don’t stop anyplace, just get right on home.”

[00:11:14] Bob: Just get right on home, Dwight says. But why did he call his mom right at that moment? Well, just a few minutes earlier his sister Dodi was, coincidentally, in line at a different branch of the same bank.