Council Collab: Navigating Refund Fraud in the Age of Agentic AI

​How retailers can fight return abuse without punishing loyal customers. 

​Every refund request presents a familiar dilemma: approve it and risk rewarding fraud, or question it and risk losing a loyal customer. With returns abuse already costing retailers billions, and AI agents beginning to make claims on behalf of shoppers, that balancing act is getting even more complicated.

​But how are retailers actually navigating it? Where do you draw the line between protecting your business and protecting the customer experience? And what happens when you can't tell whether you're dealing with a person, an AI assistant, or a fraudster?

​In this interactive Council Collab, we'll bring together retail, fraud, and tech leaders for a candid, peer-to-peer conversation about the evolving returns fraud landscape. We'll compare real-world challenges, explore different approaches, and tackle the questions retailers are still trying to answer.

​Panelists:

• ​Jeff Otto, Chief Marketing Officer, Riskified (Moderator)

• ​Sahal Laher, EVP/CIO, Centric Brands

• ​Matt Ezyk, VP of Digital Commerce & Experience, Maxwood Furniture

• ​Dajana Gajic-Fisic, VP of Fraud Strategy, The Wolfe Companies

​Questions we'll explore:

• ​Where do you draw the line? How are retailers balancing frictionless returns with the need to prevent abuse?

• ​What changes when AI enters the picture? Are AI agents creating fundamentally new fraud risks, or simply accelerating existing ones?

• ​What aren't we seeing? How much fraud goes undetected when retailers rely only on their own customer data?

• ​Who owns the problem? As fraud prevention and customer experience become increasingly intertwined, who should be making the decisions?

• ​What's actually working? Where are retailers seeing progress, and where are the biggest unanswered questions?

​Bring your questions, your challenges, and your perspective. This is an opportunity to learn from peers, challenge conventional thinking, and help shape the conversation around one of retail's evolving challenges.