'Undercover Fraud Professor' Outlines Scams, Warns of Dark Web Industry

Dr. David Maimon, a leading expert in uncovering fraud and scams by going covert on the dark web, discussed his day-to-day operations as an "Undercover Professor” in an interview with The Floridian this week.

"I spend a lot of time upstream with criminals, meaning on their social media platforms, in their websites, in their text message applications, trying to understand what they're talking about -- getting a lot of information that they put out there, [harvesting] all this information, [bringing] it back home, and then simply [trying] to make sense out of the online fraud ecosystem out there," Maimon said.

Maimon is the Head of Fraud Insights at SentiLink, a fraud prevention company specializing in identity verification and fraud prevention for financial institutions and other organizations. He is also a professor at Georgia State University.

"The daily operation pretty much focuses on doing all that -- understanding what fraudsters have been discussing during the last 24 hours, what are they working on?" Maimon continued. "Look at some of the data I have that comes from the company, and then try to understand and figure out new trends that the fraudsters are working on in the context of any type of fraud you can imagine."

Maimon explained that the type could come in many forms, including online enrollment fraud, identity theft, and Medicare fraud. He also noted that fraudsters are not selective in their schemes, as some might think.

The warning comes just after Identity Theft Awareness Week, which ran from Jan. 26 to 30.

"We need to be more proactive with respect to the way we sort of try to understand different types of fraud out there," Maimon said regarding future safeguards. "We need to be proactive in respect to the way we collect data about fraud and try to understand it, and try to prevent [it]."

He also noted it was important for institutions to stay one step ahead of fraudsters, such as using companies like SentiLink, or risk losing money.

"We constantly, sort of, develop new technologies, finding the ways the criminals are [fostering the crimes], bypassing our security and our technology and our involved impulses and preventing that from happening," Maimon said.

Heightening overall concern about fraud, Maimon stressed that scammers will target anyone and everyone to carry out their schemes.

"The perception is that only older people are getting hit by fraud. That is not true. I mean, everybody gets hit by fraud," Maimon said. "Older people seem to have more money, so that's why we hear more about the losses. But I can tell you that a lot of young people nowadays are getting hit badly with that."

However, Maimon emphasized that older Americans should be aware of Medicare fraud, especially in Florida.

"A lot of fictitious companies, which, at the end of the day, are using Floridians' identities -- all the Floridians' identities -- in order to build Medicare with all those fictitious companies. That type of fraud is definitely geared towards victimizing older individuals," Maimon said.

On the flip side, Maimon stressed the growing concern surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) in fraud schemes and its universal impact, regardless of age. Gov. Ron DeSantis has recently discussed a plan to form an AI bill of rights to stay ahead of the evolving technology, including its potential drawbacks.

"AI definitely plays a very important role nowadays in helping clone voices and helping create images and videos that criminals are then using to lure victims to give away their money, build rapport with the victims, and then in the right time ask them to send money," Maimon said.

Maimon noted, however, that AI has been part of the online fraud ecosystem for several years and that fraud investigators have long been aware of it. A growing concern, he said, is the emergence of tools that make their own decisions, also known as agentic AI.

"You no longer tell the tool what to do, like 'create this, create that.' The tools independently [do] whatever [they want] to do," Maimon said. "There's a huge concern there, because there's some research suggesting that the LLM models, the ChatGPT... those tools are sometimes geared towards deception."

As one example, Maimon explained how ChatGPT reportedly tricked a human into thinking it was blind to solve a CAPTCHA, which determines if humans are human or not. You might see CAPTCHA on websites to catch bots over sensitive transactions.

"That's one really important incident we need to sort of acknowledge in the context of these tools," Maimon said. "You can prime those tools to engage in deceptive activity, and they will simply do that."

He also questioned who could be held responsible for the tactics.

"If you are not explicit about your instruction to the tool, but the tool deceives someone or puts together stolen identities or synthetic identities and starts using them in order to grow them, and [starts] submitting applications to open bank accounts and [takes] credit on behalf of those identities -- without you, the user, being explicit about telling the tool to do that -- Who's responsible in that case? Is it you? Is it the tool? Is it the state? Is it the bank?" he questioned.