Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Fraud Agent

🎯 Role Definition

As a Fraud Agent you will serve as a front-line investigator and risk analyst focused on protecting the business and customers from fraud, abuse, and financial crime. You will analyze alerts from transaction monitoring systems and rules engines, conduct deep-dive investigations into suspicious behavior, make timely disposition decisions (block/allow/escalate), prepare regulatory filings (SAR/STR), work closely with payments, legal and customer care teams, and help tune detection systems and workflows to reduce false positives while improving catch rates. The role requires a balance of technical proficiency with case management tools and strong investigative judgment, excellent written and verbal communication, and strict adherence to compliance and evidence-handling standards.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Customer Service Representative with payments exposure
Chargeback/Disputes Specialist
Junior Fraud Analyst or AML Analyst

Advancement To:

Senior Fraud Investigator / Senior Fraud Analyst
Fraud Operations Lead or Fraud Team Manager
Financial Crimes Analyst or AML Investigator

Lateral Moves:

Risk Operations Analyst
Payment Operations Specialist
Compliance Analyst (AML/KYC)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Conduct end-to-end investigations of suspicious transactions, account activity, and inbound alerts from transaction monitoring platforms, using a combination of automated rules, behavioral analytics, and manual enrichment to determine fraud likelihood and recommended actions.
Triage and prioritize high-volume alerts from fraud detection systems (rule-based engines, machine learning models, anomaly detection), making rapid disposition decisions to minimize customer impact and financial loss.
Execute identity verification and KYC reviews for flagged accounts, including document verification, biometric checks, phone verification, and cross-referencing public records and watchlists to confirm identity or detect synthetic identities.
Open, manage, and close cases in a case management system with complete, accurate, and audit-ready documentation of findings, time-stamped actions, owned evidence, and rationale for disposition to support compliance and potential legal action.
File Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs/STRs) and internal regulatory notifications in accordance with jurisdictional AML/CTF requirements, working with AML/Compliance to ensure correct classification and timely submission.
Handle chargeback representment and disputes by collecting supporting evidence, preparing case packs, and coordinating with card networks, issuers, and merchant partners to minimize chargeback losses and recover funds where appropriate.
Apply risk-scoring methodologies and fraud scoring models to prioritize investigations and ensure consistent decisioning across similar case types, while providing feedback to data science teams to improve scoring accuracy.
Recommend and implement immediate technical controls such as device blocking, velocity limits, credential resets, and payment holds when potential fraud patterns are identified to prevent further loss.
Collaborate with engineering and data science teams to tune rules, optimize thresholds, and test new detection strategies; contribute detailed A/B test inputs, observed false-positive patterns, and use-case scenarios.
Execute payment-level investigations across cards, ACH, wire transfers, and digital wallets by tracing funds, verifying counterparty identities, and identifying fraudulent merchant behavior or money mules.
Escalate complex or high-dollar cases to senior investigators, legal counsel, or law enforcement partners, preparing formal evidence packages and coordinating chain-of-custody procedures.
Monitor and analyze fraud trends, producing periodic reports and dashboards that highlight emerging attack vectors, merchant or geography-specific spikes, and suggested mitigations to product and operations leadership.
Provide direct support to customer service teams by reviewing account history, producing clear investigative summaries, and offering recommended remediation steps (refunds, reimbursements, account remediation) to ensure positive customer outcomes while protecting business interests.
Coordinate cross-functional responses to coordinated fraud incidents (phishing campaigns, credential stuffing, bot attacks), including rapid containment, customer notifications, and post-incident root-cause analysis.
Maintain up-to-date knowledge of payment rails, card network rules (Visa, Mastercard), chargeback reason codes, and regulatory obligations (PCI-DSS, GDPR, state/federal AML laws) to ensure investigation and remediation activities remain compliant.
Participate in customer outreach and authentication flows when necessary—conducting scripted interviews, obtaining declarations, or collecting additional identity evidence while maintaining empathy and confidentiality.
Support litigation or law enforcement requests by preparing subpoenas, affidavits, and detailed timelines of fraudulent campaigns; act as the primary fraud subject-matter expert during investigative calls.
Conduct regular quality assurance reviews of investigator workstreams, documenting coaching points, knowledge gaps, and process improvements to drive operational excellence and reduce error rates.
Lead fraud pattern hunting by proactively searching for novel attack patterns (account takeovers, promo abuse, API abuse), using SQL queries, transaction joins, device fingerprinting, and OSINT tools to discover and remediate previously unseen schemes.
Mentor and train junior fraud agents and new hires on investigative best practices, internal systems, escalation matrices, and regulatory requirements to build a high-performing fraud team.
Maintain and update fraud playbooks, runbooks, and standard operating procedures with clear decision criteria, escalation paths, and sample case studies to ensure consistent and scalable operations.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives by documenting false-positive drivers, recommending product changes (rate-limits, CAPTCHA, MFA), and working with Product Managers to prioritize fraud-reduction features.
Manage vendor and third-party relationships for identity verification, device intelligence, and fraud scoring vendors; validate data quality, SLA adherence, and integration efficacy to ensure vendor outputs align with internal detection needs.
Ensure data privacy and secure handling of sensitive customer information in accordance with internal policies and external regulations, performing redaction and strict access control as part of investigative workflows.
Participate in on-call rotations or extended-hours incident response for urgent fraud events, providing timely investigative input and executing containment actions to limit exposure.

Secondary Functions

Provide regular feedback loops to data engineering and analytics teams to improve alerting precision and reduce operational load by decreasing false positives.
Support ad-hoc reporting requests and exploratory analysis to quantify fraud loss, false positive rates, median case handle time, and operational KPIs for leadership.
Contribute to the organization’s fraud strategy and roadmap by proposing detection investments, prioritizing tooling upgrades, and estimating operational impact for new prevention initiatives.
Collaborate with product, legal, and compliance teams to translate emerging fraud risks into product requirements, acceptance criteria, and controls that are technically implementable.
Participate in sprint planning, post-mortems, and other agile ceremonies with cross-functional teams to test fraud mitigation experiments and validate results against defined success metrics.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Transaction monitoring and case investigation using commercial and custom rules engines (knowledge of common platforms such as Actimize, SAS, NICE, Kount, Sift, Riskified, Forter is a plus).
Strong working knowledge of AML/CTF frameworks, SAR/STR filing processes, and KYC/EDD procedures.
Payments knowledge across card networks (Visa, Mastercard), ACH, wire transfers, and digital wallet rails including chargeback processes and representment.
Experience with case management systems and CRM tools (e.g., Salesforce, Zendesk, CaseWare) and maintaining audit-ready case files.
Proficiency in SQL for data lookups and ad-hoc analysis; familiarity with Python or R for basic analytics and enrichment scripting is highly valuable.
Familiarity with device intelligence, IP geolocation, fingerprinting, and browser/device risk signals to enrich investigations.
Understanding of identity verification tools and processes, including document verification, biometric checks, and third-party IDV vendors (Trulioo, Jumio, Onfido).
Knowledge of fraud scoring models, risk segmentation, and velocity rules; ability to interpret model outputs and suggest tuning parameters.
Competence in handling sensitive PII and ensuring compliance with data privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA) and payment security standards (PCI-DSS).
Experience preparing evidence packages for law enforcement and coordinating with external partners for recovery or prosecution.

Soft Skills

Strong investigative mindset with exceptional attention to detail and an ability to synthesize disparate signals into a clear case narrative.
Excellent written communication skills for producing clear, concise, and defensible case notes, escalation summaries, and regulatory filings.
Sound judgment and decision-making under pressure with a focus on balancing customer experience and fraud risk mitigation.
Collaborative attitude and ability to work cross-functionally with product, engineering, customer support, and compliance teams.
Time management and prioritization skills to manage high-volume queues and meet SLA targets consistently.
Adaptability and curiosity to stay ahead of evolving fraud typologies and to learn new tools and techniques quickly.
Professional discretion and integrity when handling sensitive customer and company information.
Coaching and mentoring skills to help upskill junior team members and share investigative best practices.
Analytical mindset with the ability to interpret metrics and use data to drive operational improvements.
Customer-centric approach to investigations, ensuring victims of fraud are supported while protecting the company from exposure.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

High school diploma or equivalent; combination of education and relevant work experience in fraud, payments, or investigations accepted.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice, Finance, Business, Computer Science, Data Analytics, or a related field.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Criminal Justice / Criminology
Finance, Accounting or Economics
Computer Science, Data Science or Information Systems
Cybersecurity or Information Security

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 1–5 years in fraud, payments, chargebacks, AML, investigations, or related operational roles.

Preferred:

2+ years of direct fraud investigation or AML experience within financial services, fintech, payments, or e-commerce.
Prior exposure to high-volume transaction monitoring, chargeback management, or regulatory reporting.
Experience working with rules engines, machine learning based fraud detection, and supporting improvements to detection logic.