Evening Session: Fraud and social engineering: building human-centred defence against economic crime
Fraud is now the most common crime in England and Wales.
Most defences still treat fraud as a technical problem to be filtered, blocked or detected after the money has moved. The decisive moment happens earlier, in the mind of the target, where a scam is engineered step by step to switch off careful thinking. Frontline staff, fraud teams and families are usually the last line of defence, meeting people mid-payment rather than at first contact. They have to intervene under pressure, without deepening the harm, and keep safeguarding the person long after the first loss, all while the tactics keep evolving.
This workshop series has been designed for the professionals who sit at the point of intervention: frontline and customer-facing teams, fraud and financial crime specialists, and safeguarding leads who need a practical, behaviourally grounded method for spotting, interrupting and responding to social engineering.
Workshop Outcomes
What the Series Covers
Reading social engineering as deliberate behavioural design, not random trickery, and why anyone can be moved into a vulnerable state given the right pressure at the right moment
Using the CREATE framework to trace a scam from first contact to action, one stage at a time
Identifying, at each stage, the precise point where the scam can be interrupted
Breaking the spell: intervening with a captured person without triggering the defences that make a blunt warning backfire
Reducing harm when a scam cannot be fully stopped, and safeguarding victims against the second hit of recovery fraud
Why Attend?
The workshop is led by Criminologist Dr Nicola Harding, of The Financial Crime Lab, which is a UK not-for-profit focused on education, prevention and awareness.
Nicola will drawing on her criminology, behavioural science and frontline fraud prevention in this interactive series to give professionals a shared language and a repeatable method for the moment of intervention, learning alongside peers who face the same cases.
What You Will Gain
A clear, evidence-based understanding of why intelligent, capable people are defrauded
A single behavioural framework, CREATE, that maps how scams work and where they break
Practical techniques for calming a person, re-engaging their judgement, and handing them an independent check
Language and questions that open a door rather than win an argument
A harm-reduction mindset for partial interventions and post-loss safeguarding
A shared lens that lets telecoms, banks, frontline staff and family coordinate their response
Who Should Attend?
Heads of fraud and financial crime, customer protection and vulnerability specialists, frontline and contact centre teams, safeguarding professionals, and anyone responsible for preventing and responding to fraud and social engineering.