The Human Pulse: Navigating Fraud Detection in the Digital Age with the Four Ps

In speaking recently with my current co-worker Amanda Estiverne-Colas, who serves as Director and Head of Payments Practice at Perficient, Amanda shared with me statistics she had provided to her audience at the 2025 GULF AML Forum, an annual conference for anti-money laundering (AML) professionals in the financial services industry and government. The statistics, which I found both fascinating and scary, included: 

• Phishing attacks have surged by 4,151% just since ChatGPT’s launch in 2022 

• Phone Phishing attacks increased by 28% in Q3 2024, while smishing incidents rose by 22% 

• More than half (53%) of all breaches involve customer PII, which can include tax identification numbers, emails, phone numbers, and home addresses 

For the clarity of readers, phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending email messages purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords or credit card numbers, and ...