By Anat Goldstein and Farook Sattar
A finance worker at a multinational firm received what appeared to be a legitimate call from someone claiming to be the company’s CFO. The person receiving the call ended up transferring $25 million. The reality: The CFO’s voice was AI generated. The CFO never made that call.
That incident is no longer an outlier. Voice fraud in banking increased by roughly 30 percent in 2025, with AI-powered synthetic voices capable of fooling even experienced professionals. Synthetic voice attacks against financial institutions rose sharply in 2024, increasing by a factor of approximately 20 compared to the prior year, as data from the same period indicated that roughly one in 750 banking calls was flagged as potentially fraudulent.
Commercial AI voice-cloning tools have significantly reduced the barrier to entry for attackers. As synthetic voice technology becomes…
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This category refers to crimes committed by employees or insiders against their own organizations. It is often the most damaging because the perpetrator has authorized access to systems.
- Asset Misappropriation: The most common form, involving the theft of company resources. This ranges from simple “skimming” (taking cash before it’s recorded) to complex schemes involving the theft of inventory or intellectual property.
- Payroll Fraud: Employees may create “ghost employees” on the system, falsify their own timesheets to claim unworked overtime, or divert salary payments to their own accounts.
- Financial Statement Fraud: Management deliberately misrepresents the company’s financial health by inflating revenue or hiding liabilities to attract investors or meet performance bonuses.