Hacker Conversations: Alex Hall, One-Time Fraudster

A first-person journey from undetected fraud to defending trust—how life events, neurodiversity, and hard-won insight shaped a former fraudster into a fraud fighter.

Fraud: how to do it and not get caught – by someone who did it and didn’t get caught but now catches other fraudsters.

Alex Hall’s professional life is typified by two major geomagnetic reversals in his moral compass: first from neutral to bad, and then from bad to good. Here we discuss the causal life events, and how the reversals affected his everyday life culminating in his current position as a Trust and Safety Architect at Sift.

The making of a fraudster

Asked if he is a hacker, Hall replies, “in the modern sense of the word today, ‘No’.” But he added, “I used to be a fraudster, which many people think of as a type of hacking.” We decided to differentiate the two ...