Artificial intelligence is, of course, a key part of SentiLink’s business. But Harris and Blumenfeld took a crucial lesson from how they first recognized synthetic fraud: A human, not a computer, made the key connection. In August 2016, the
“This is crazy,” Harris recalls thinking. “These people don’t exist, but they tricked the bureaus into getting a credit report.” Using the same name and birthdate was stupid. But the underlying strategy was clever and patient: Scammers were stealing Social Security numbers from folks who weren’t likely to be actively shopping for credit, such as kids, prisoners and nursing home residents. They paired those numbers with fictitious names and real addresses.
Ingenuity and speed have been key to the pair’s success so far. Harris grew up in Los Angeles and sped through four years of high school math, English and Spanish in three years at the Milken Community School, a Jewish day school named after billionaire donor Michael Milken. Without finishing high school, he applied to a dozen top colleges. The University of Chicago was one of five that accepted him.
As they scrambled to build their model, the need for it was growing. Research firm Aite-Novarica estimates that U.S. financial institutions’ losses from synthetic ID fraud tripled from $800 million in 2017 to at least $2.4 billion last year. But the firm notes that losses could be more than twice its estimate because some lenders still write off bad debt without knowing whether the deadbeat is synthetic or real.