Build or buy: Credit fraud is now easier than building a real score
What you'll learn:
- The extent of the credit boost market.
- The cost of artificially inflating your credit.
- What services/tactics are being employed by the criminals.
- What your institution can do to address this type of fraud.
For a few hundred dollars, Telegram sellers will rent you a stranger's decade-old credit card. For a few thousand, they'll sell you a whole new person.
Resistant AI's threat intelligence team analyzed more than 13,900 messages across 21 Telegram channels, plus websites and Facebook groups, to map a market nobody had catalogued in its entirety: credit boost fraud.
Importantly, the buyers (or unintentional fraudsters) rarely ask for their credit to be inflated directly. They want a car, an apartment, or a loan, and sellers deliver the approval as a service. Many have no idea they're committing fraud.
These schemes work because checks vary. Verifying an SSN is harder and more expensive than it sounds, cheaper products get shallower checks, some lenders see bank data while others see only a number, and fast unsecured decisions leave little room to look further.
Join Threat Intelligence Investigator Riin Aljas and Head of Threat Intelligence Joe Lemmonier for a credit fraud safari: what's for sale, who's buying, how sellers market it, and what lenders can do when the credit score itself is part of the product.
