PODCAST
How AI Is Supercharging Investment Fraud (And What You Can Do About It)
Artificial intelligence is giving fraudsters powerful new tools, like deepfakes, voice cloning, and synthetic identities that are harder than ever to detect. The technology is moving fast, but the underlying playbook hasn't changed: urgency, emotional manipulation, and pressure to act before you think.
On this episode, Christine Kieffer, Senior Vice President of Investor Education and President of the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, and Mayur Patel, Director, Financial Crimes Intelligence, Strategic Intelligence, explore how AI is reshaping the fraud landscape, what FINRA is seeing from its unique position at the center of the markets, and what investors and member firms can do to stay ahead of these threats.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Financial Intelligence Fusion Center (FIFC)
FINRA Investor Education Foundation
Protecting Consumers from Fraud
FINRA Forward: A Year of Progress
Listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Below is a transcript of the episode. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human editors and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
00:00 – 01:28
Margherita Beale: Artificial intelligence is giving fraudsters powerful new tools. Deep fake videos that can put words in anyone's mouth, voice cloning that can mimic a loved one from just a few seconds of audio, synthetic identities built to pass every verification check you throw at them. The technology is moving fast, but the underlying playbook hasn't changed. Urgency, emotional manipulation, pressure to act before you think. Fraudsters have always relied on those levers, AI just makes them easier to deploy, harder to detect, and far more convincing.
On this episode, we'll explore how AI has been reshaping the fraud landscape for investors and member firms, what FINRA is seeing from its unique position at the center of the markets, and what FINRA is actively doing on the investigative side, the intelligence side, and the investor education side to stay ahead of these threats and protect investors and member firms.
Welcome to FINRA Unscripted. I'm your host, Margherita Beale. Joining us today to talk about AI-enabled fraud are Christine Kieffer, Senior Vice President of Investor Education and President of the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, and Mayur Patel, Director, Financial Crimes Intelligence, Strategic Intelligence. Mayur and Christine, welcome to the podcast.
01:28 – 01:29
Christine Kieffer: Thank you.
01:29 – 01:31
Mayur Patel: Hi, Margherita. Happy to be here.
01:32 – 01:43
Margherita Beale: Great. So, let's dive right in. Is AI-enabled fraud really a new problem, or is it a new version of something we've been fighting for a long time?
01:43 – 01:31
Christine Kieffer: Well, I'll start. The short answer is it's both. And that distinction matters in how we fight it. I'll frame it this way: the “what” is very familiar, but the “how” has fundamentally changed. So the types of schemes that we see, the fraud schemes, that's the “what.” They haven't really changed. We still see variations of pump and dump schemes, pitches involving non-existent investments, and those that capitalize on today's trending topics to otherwise defraud investors. But how fraudsters are executing those schemes has completely changed with the use of AI. We're well past the days of emails, with typos and videos with obvious inconsistencies, and facial movements that don't match words, or six fingers on a hand. Call scripts are perfected, voices are changed and impersonated, whole websites are built within minutes. Legitimate people and businesses are being cloned, and this builds source credibility for the scammer. It's simply a shortcut to trust. So many fraud schemes FINRA sees rely on fraudsters needing to build this trust and to borrow trust that belongs to someone else. And AI has simply lowered the cost and skills to do it convincingly and at scale in lightning speed.
03:03 – 03:21
Margherita Beale: Great. Thanks, Christine. So, walk us through the main categories of AI-enabled fraud that you're seeing. I know there's deep fakes, voice cloning, social media impersonation, synthetic identities, and that's just to name a few. What are the most prevalent right now?
03:22 – 05:20
Mayur Patel: Yeah, so Christine started off great describing how she frames it, the “what” and the “how.” The “what,” which she talked about, is familiar. All the different types of scams that FINRA and we as a society have been seeing over the years and decades, whether that's imposter-related scams, romance, investment club, fake websites, mobile applications that are fake. And then of course the cyber-enabled fraud scams like account takeovers, business email compromise. That's the “what.” These are familiar with many investors. They're familiar with the industry, and in general, like I said, our society.
But the “how” has changed. And of course, AI is supercharging all of this, especially in the context of, let's say, social engineering, for instance. These are tricks that fraudsters use to manipulate people into giving away something, whether that's private information, money, or access, access to their brokerage accounts or access to accounts in general. AI is being used to supercharge all of this. And so what's most prevalent now from a FINRA perspective, it's how AI is being used to make fake ID documents, for instance, to help in the impersonation scams or deep fakes of both images and voice calls. And I think the social engineering aspect is very key into three specific things that I want to talk about.
And I'll define a little because many people might not be aware of them, but phishing, smishing, and vishing. These terms are thrown around, but when it comes to phishing, these are emails and websites that are sent directly to individuals to, in essence, steal information. AI is being used to create and supercharge these. Smishing is just text messages that I think all of us receive. We’ve seen indications where AI is being used to craft the language and send it out to mass people. And then finally, phishing, these are voice clones that we talked about that can be deep faked very, very easily. That's what we are seeing that is most prevalent right now in the market.
05:21 – 05:45
Margherita Beale: Relatedly, one thing that's changed is the old advice of insisting on a video call to verify someone's identity. And that guidance has been complicated by deep fake video technology, among other things that you've mentioned. What does that mean for how investors should think about verifying who they're talking to?
05:45 – 07:54
Christine Kieffer: As Mayur noted, AI has really been a game changer when it comes to impostoring. And that means anyone or anything. If someone is not willing to have a video chat, that's certainly a red flag. But we can't just really rely on that as our only red flag anymore. We hear repeatedly from scam victims who say they were cautious and had their guard up about a new online friend up until the moment of a video call. And then boom, it felt real. And that's when the scam really took off. A modern AI tool only needs as little as three to 15 seconds of audio to clone and imitate a person's voice. And for video, you only need a single clear photograph to create a basic face swap or even a talking head impersonation. And we know, particularly in social media, people are putting out videos and stories and their likeness on the web all the time. And it takes just moments of that information to be utilized and manipulated by these AI tools to impersonate. And that's even assuming that the scammer is impersonating a real person, another person. In many cases, AI is being used to create a wholly new and fake identity altogether, and not even impostoring an actual person, just imposturing a human in general.
So it's simply more and more difficult for us to spot the difference and for us to even rely on the ability of an investor to spot the difference themselves. So it's more important than ever that we do our best to vet our sources and keep our skepticism high, especially when it comes to decisions involving money. We all need to slow down think about putting some speed bumps in place, especially if you've met someone online or through social media. And I keep saying this especially because, you know, that's where this imposturing reaches its scale. It's the use of social media, it's the use of an online means, which in many cases really isolates the conversation between the scammer and the individual in a way that others can't intervene.
07:55 – 09:46
Mayur Patel: Yeah, Christine, I think your point is very well taken. Approaching this with skepticism and also just slowing down, I think are important. Margherita, to answer your question, I don't think investors or all of us should stop doing voice calls for verification. I think it's one tool in your toolbox and you should use that tool in a way where you take steps to verify yourself. So, when you're doing a voice call, there are things that you can do to make sure that you can verify the individual, whether it's red flags of where they are in the room, what their background is. If they told you before that they were in New York City and you look outside their window and it's something different, there are things that you can do. So, I wouldn't say to investors, “don't rely on video calls,” just use it as one of many tools that you have.
And of course, that also leads to some other red flags and things that we've pushed out and in general are still relevant even in the age of AI. It's just you have to look at it a little bit more specifically. So not sharing your information regarding your personal finances or your identity with someone you don't know who contacted you originally online is, I think, a good thing for investors to think about, especially whether that's via a social media platform or what we talked about via text message. Of course be highly suspicious, skepticism again, of a new friend online or a romantic connection. And especially if those conversations lead to asking about your personal finances. The unsolicited contact that we all get is a very good red flag, even in the age of AI, to be wary of. And then of course ask yourself questions of the source. So, who's contacting you? What's the gain from their perspective of you sharing information with them without them getting anything in return, I think is something that investors should think about also.
09:46 – 10:20
Christine Kieffer: And, you might also want to consider how you can incorporate AI as a tool to help identify a scam. Financial institutions and regulators are doing this on the back end. And many legitimate cybersecurity companies are offering tools that consumers can use, often for free. So, while we're talking today a lot about AI-enabled scams, we also can look at it from the flip side and say, how can we be utilizing these tools? And we need to be utilizing these tools on our own and in our businesses to fight this scam-demic.
10:20 – 11:12
Mayur Patel: I actually have a point on that too. I completely agree, Christine, with what you're saying. We can use AI to help us identify fraud. I would like to say, more of a PSA from my perspective, an AI search engine is not a tool to verify stuff. It is a more enhanced version of a Google search. So an AI search engine, just think of any that are out there that we all use, it provides you or is pulling the back end LLM and all of the technology involved. It's pulling what's already on the internet. So, if a fraudster is creating a fake persona, the LLM isn’t gonna pick up on it unless you ask it specific questions. And so for investors, I think many of us, me, myself included, are using these AI search tools. I think we should just approach that with skepticism also in the context of as it relates to scams.
11:12 – 12:07
Christine Kieffer: That's a great, great point, Mayur, because we do hear from investors who have been victimized because they clicked the first link in a search, or maybe they read something through the AI summary at the top of their search, but didn't verify the source that was being pulled for that. And verifying information in this disclosure-based regime that we have, in particular, verifying information is really critical for investors. And taking that information and then applying it to your personal circumstances. What are your financial goals? What's your investment strategy? What's your risk tolerance? And risk tolerance isn't just what you think you can tolerate, it's what your finances can actually tolerate and how it makes you feel that emotional toleration. So, you absolutely drove home a really important point, which is dig a bit deeper, go deeper into the information source verification pieces.
12:07 – 12:20
Margherita Beale: Great, thank you both. So from the intelligence side, what does FINRA see that the average investor or even the average member firm might not be aware of?
12:20 – 13:36
Mayur Patel: I think the short answer is we see the aggregate, the intelligence function within FINRA. What we aim to do is put together disparate signals, whether that's from one investor complaint or a summary of a trend from a member firm and put that into a larger picture. Another way of saying that is we see more of the puzzle put together rather than the pieces of the puzzle. And in the Intel function within FINRA, from where I come from, I think the number one thing that we ask for, and that's very beneficial from our perspective is all of those investor tips and complaints that FINRA receives, and then our member firms reaching out about what they're seeing, especially in the scam space, the fraud space. And then taking it even a step further, what we're talking about here is how they are seeing the use of AI in their day-to-day lives, whether that's an investor or a specific instance of how they were defrauded. We use that to put together a larger picture of what our industry, that being the securities industry, is seeing. And that's how our perspective is a little bit different than whether that's an individual investor or even an individual member firm that might be large, but is still only seeing one piece of the larger puzzle.
13:36 – 13:58
Margherita Beale: So, despite all of the new technology, and you touched on this a bit earlier, but are the core red flags like urgency, emotional manipulation, the pressure to act fast, are those still the most reliable warning signs? And how do you counsel people on what to watch out for?
13:58 – 17:11
Christine Kieffer: Persuasion and emotional manipulation are absolutely perennial weapons of fraud. They take us into this emotional center of our brain where we just don't respond with our rational understanding. So, no matter how much investment knowledge you have, experience you have, when we're in these heightened emotional states, we tend to make more impulsive decisions that are driven by this emotion. And these scams are designed to ensure that the actions that we take, these impulses that we have, are actually to our own detriment. So it's really about hijacking our brain and taking us down a path or being manipulated. And that's done through the use of persuasion. So absolutely when you notice signs of urgency, source credibility, for instance, we talked earlier about building trust. Source credibility is a trust builder. And that's what impostoring really harnesses toward credibility.
And then you have urgency. This is a form of scarcity. You've got scarcity of time. You also have scarcity of product or even exclusivity, which can be a form of scarcity. And all of these things get our juices flowing, get us interested in an offer when we might, on any other day, not have been so interested. And then there's promises and guarantees. In the investment space, anything that is promised or guaranteed should have a huge red flag over it.
And I think one of the most important red flags that a lot of people don't really think about as much is a request for secrecy. It's waving a red flag. Scammers try to isolate their targets and keep us under this emotional ether, this emotional manipulation as long as possible. And so they request secrecy so that they can keep you there and no one else can pierce this veil. And so whenever our emotions are running high and money is involved, it's really time to slow down.
One of my core pieces of recommendations for anybody, particularly with money decisions, is to slow down and tell someone else. So just telling someone else is perhaps the single most best way to protect yourself. And it has three protective elements to it. One, there's a time delay. So you're sort of naturally slowing down because you took the time to call or text or tell someone else what the deal was and what you're thinking about. So there's this natural time delay. Two, that other person might actually recognize the elements of that scam. So they might be familiar with that scam, and that's another. So they might be able to stop you before it's too late. And the third, which I think most people don't think about, is really that when we say something aloud, it sounds very different than when we're just thinking about it in our heads. So when we're mulling over the offer or the opportunity, and we're letting these emotions run high, or not even choosing to have these emotions run high, but they are running high. We often put things together in our head. It doesn't matter that they sound realistic, but when we say them out loud, we often hear the red flags that we wouldn't otherwise hear. And so just telling someone else really accomplishes three really, really important protective strategies.
17:11 – 18:12
Mayur Patel: Christine, you're right. What you just talked about are things that we've traditionally and historically talked about, but are still effective even in the age of AI. And I think they're very useful. I mean, I have two specific examples in the context of AI, one that I kind of mentioned already, this concept of geography. One of the red flags I think we are seeing more and more of in the use of AI is these individuals are likely not located in the United States that are perpetrating these types of acts. And so a claimed location of a bad actor doesn't really fit the indicators of how you have talked to them historically, whether they're messaging you in the middle of the morning or middle of the night, yet they say they are in New York City, for instance, at where you are. These are red flags in the back of your head that might not by itself mean anything, but as Christine, you're saying, when you put it together, they can help identify or make you stop and think about who you're actually talking to.
18:12 – 18:19
Margherita Beale: Right. I love that about saying it out loud. I'd never thought of it that way. It's like reading something out loud and you're like, wait, that sounds really strange.
18:19 – 18:23
Christine Kieffer: This is like my signature shtick. I like to push that one, Margherita.
18:23 – 18:24
Margherita Beale: It’s very good.
18:24 – 18:43
Mayur Patel: You know what? Saying it out loud, we talk about how AI supercharges and the speed. Sometimes there might not be enough time to speak to somebody else. But that concept of just saying it out loud, that doesn't take any time. And I think that is one key red flag, Christine, that you talked about, I think is very helpful.
18:43 – 18:54
Margherita Beale: Shifting gears a bit, how is AI-enabled fraud changing FINRA's prevention strategy while still keeping the focus on protecting investors?
18:54 – 20:44
Mayur Patel: I'll start with this. I think there are two main points in the beginning, and I'll maybe dig a little deeper into both. We talked a little bit about this speed and then engaging with a wide variety of stakeholders. I think our strategy is that we understand the speed of these frauds and scams, especially in the age of AI, is just increasing. And a response to that means that we should increase the speed in which we are able to act and respond. And then that also leads to how we approach fraud and scams. Much of this activity, Christine, I think you would agree, is outside of our regulatory jurisdiction. So, our rules and regulation that FINRA enforces. And so we are not going to be the individuals who can take action against the fraudster, for instance. But we have a lot of, in my world, intelligence that points to where it's originating from or the specific tactics and getting that intelligence and information out to our external stakeholders is, I think, very important. We understand we can't take that direct action and we can get it into the hands of those who can.
I'll just give a quick example. We see things very early on because investors and member firms provide that information to us. Early in January 2024, Christine, we work with you all to issue an investor insight article on investment club scams. But we didn't stop there. We shared that information with external parties. And since that Investor Wd article that we issued, law enforcement, the FBI specifically, the SEC, and even Meta issued public service announcements. We also understand that FINRA's reach is, not limited, but other entities have a larger reach than FINRA does. And so getting information into individuals' hands like external stakeholders is a strategy I think that we are continuing to employ.
20:44 – 22:22
Christine Kieffer: I'm glad, Mayur, that you pointed out the Investor Insights articles because we rely on intelligence from the Strat Intel group, but also what we see from investor communications, from our research, to really identify the issues that we should be promoting through these investor insights articles. And we showcase specific investment-related schemes that our teams have identified. And then we syndicate this content out to personal finance news media and distribute it on social media. And as Mayur pointed out, contribute to the field otherwise through a lot of other stakeholders. And that's really something I want to underscore, which is it takes working from all sides. We simply cannot rely on warning messages about how to spot a fake as a reliable prevention tool.
And you were asking specifically, Margherita, about prevention. And so the complexity of today's scams really demand that we build better tools to prevent these scams from reaching consumers in the first place. Now that's not to say education doesn't have a role. Absolutely, education has a role to play in prevention. And FINRA Foundation research demonstrates that prior knowledge of specific scams and even scams generally, or the tactics of scammers generally, like we were talking about some of these persuasion tactics, is protective. There's absolutely research demonstrating the protective elements that education has. However, we need to be working in surround sound. And by that I mean coming at this issue from all sides. And that includes sharing educational messaging from all directions. Our knowledge fades, our attention wanes, scams evolve. So surround sound messaging is like a booster shot that keeps our scam spotting skills sharp.
22:22 – 22:28
Margherita Beale: What is FINRA doing to stay ahead of these threats and protect investors?
22:28 – 23:59
Christine Kieffer: Fighting scams takes a coordinated and global effort. In fact, October 5th to 11th is World Investor Week, which is a global campaign dedicated to promoting investor education and protection. And this year's themes hit exactly on these topics we're talking about today. The themes are investor resilience, digital deception, and scam alert. So FINRA teamed up with other U.S. regulators to promote awareness of investor education and protection resources that follow these themes, including AI, particularly in the context of digital deception. I mentioned earlier that we have Investor Insights articles and will continue to promote those during the week and throughout the year. The FINRA Foundation also works with a range of public and private partners to educate consumers, peer groups, professionals, and member firms to help investors protect themselves. And we engage in research to understand fraud prevalence, susceptibility factors, and intervention techniques. Then we apply what we learn to improve our prevention and intervention resources. And more importantly, we share all of these insights broadly with a variety of stakeholders. Mayur mentioned earlier that we're sharing our intelligence with others. And we do the same with our research and with our prevention and intervention resources. That includes member firms, policymakers, federal and state regulators, and many others. And we make all of our research freely available on the FINRA Foundation's research center on our website, which is FINRA Foundation dot org.
23:59 – 24:33
Mayur Patel: I'll add that FINRA sits in a unique position because we have the ability to see scam typologies and fraud schemes very early on compared to others in our industry and in the government, truthfully. And because we're able to be a little bit nimble, we can collect the information quicker and we can push out information and intelligence quicker. And in this space, like we've been talking about, speed matters. And I think that's where we're also trying to just supercharge the way we respond, which is act quickly also.
24:33 – 24:50
Margherita Beale: Can you tell us about the ways in which member firms are engaging with FINRA's resources and guidance on this topic? And how is FINRA responding to requests from members for more tools, for more information sharing and for support?
24:50 – 26:18
Mayur Patel: In March of this year, FINRA launched the Financial Intelligence Fusion Center, or FIFC for short. It's a secure portal where member firms can receive timely, actionable cybersecurity and fraud threat intelligence to protect their customers and their business in general. The FIFC is bi-directional. And specifically, things that we're doing to push information out to member firms for both, again, their business and their customers' use are a variety of Intel products. One specific one is a threat intelligence product, which is a type of an Intel product that summarizes a threat, provides mitigation strategies and resources. We've specifically in the past year, year and a half, done a series on adversarial use of Gen AI threat intel products. And we've used these to educate our member firms and their customers about the typologies that we've been talking about. And tactics that bad actors are using. The FIFC acts as a mechanism to receive intelligence from our member firms. And like I started, this is cyber and fraud. And so it's exactly the type of information that we want and what we're talking about here today. And it's a way that member firms can share what they're seeing and what their customers are seeing. So that's one way that we're not only responding to what member firms are asking from a guidance and resource perspective, but it's also how we're engaging with firms.
26:18 – 27:06
Christine Kieffer: I'll point out as well that Mayur's team and colleagues have put together a takedown toolkit, which is a resource that firms can use to help take down imposter websites. We've seen a problem and a growth in imposter websites where either firms or individual registered reps or in financial professionals in general are being impostered and even their legitimate CRD numbers are being promoted through these websites so that if an investor goes to the website, they might think that this is a legitimate registered professional. And so we're helping firms take down these kinds of sites when their own brands or reps are being represented. And so I really want to make sure that firms are aware of that resource. It's called the takedown toolkit.
27:06 – 27:43
Mayur Patel: Yeah, Christine, if I can add to that really quick, we've been doing this proactive identification of imposter websites now for probably more than a year. What we have been seeing is the sophistication and speed of these websites increase or indications that AI tools are being used to create these websites. If you just take a look at the websites that we were identifying maybe a year, year and a half ago, they are rudimentary compared to the websites that we see now. And those are just indications of how AI is being used. And so that takedown toolkit is a good way for our member firms to take action against these types of scams.
27:43 – 29:30
Christine Kieffer: We're also making it easier for member firms to access other tools and resources that FINRA offers. So we put together a collection of resources under the member firm hub on FINRA.org, freely available, not just for firms. So encourage you to check it out. You can simply go to the top navigation of FINRA.org and hit the tab that says for firms. And there's a link to a collection of scam prevention and assistance resources. And that includes training that FINRA is providing, investor content and scam fact sheets that can be shared with customers, guidance on working with individuals who might be caught up in or facing the aftermath of a scam, including access to FINRA's Securities Helpline for Seniors, and FINRA Foundation supported peer support programs, which are meant to help investors cope with social and emotional aftermath of a scam. Addressing these non-financial consequences of a scam can be as important as the financial. And so we really want to make sure that there's some sort of warm handoff opportunity because main firms are not in a position to have the kind of relationship that really supports this emotional healing. And so having an opportunity to work with a peer support program or refer an individual to a peer support program can really make the difference because supporting an individual in crisis is prevention. Re-victimization is so common that we really need to be thinking about is not just intervention in that moment, it's also preventing the next scam. FINRA is also regularly releasing continuing education courses for registered professionals on these topics and holding webinars and conferences for member firms, including the most recent financial crimes and cybersecurity conference, which was in New York just a bit ago.
29:30 – 29:50
Margherita Beale: Great. And we'll include links to all of the resources that you just mentioned on the page for the episode. So looking ahead, if you had to predict where AI-enabled fraud is heading over the next few years, what concerns you the most?
29:50 – 30:56
Mayur Patel: So I think the losses linked to AI-enabled fraud are going to likely keep rising. The speed, the sophistication is going to continue to change and adapt to all of the mitigation strategies that not only our member firms are implementing, but in general that are being implemented. My concern is that fighting AI-enabled fraud is going to take more of a backseat to all of the other issues and advances that we're seeing in AI right now. And I think there are so many issues right now that are floating around as it relates to AI. I'm just a little concerned that AI-enabled fraud and scams, we're really relying on investors to identify it rather than making a holistic approach of how to stop it.
30:56 – 32:00
Christine Kieffer: And Mayur, that gets exactly to what my biggest concern is, which is when we're not working in surround sound, when we're not coming at it from all sides across all sectors, and we overly rely on the education of investors as the prevention tool, we're really not going to be making any headway. And in fact, your prediction that AI-enabled fraud's losses are going to be rising is absolutely going to be coming true. And so prevention is part of it. Prevention from an education standpoint is part of it. Preventing the actual pitches from reaching the investors, building better tools to identify scams before they reach the individual, but also better tools that keep those scams from even being able to proliferate in the underground environment are all really part of the fight. So I'm most concerned that the easy answer is to tell investors how to recognize it while that's part of it, it's not enough.
32:00 – 32:09
Margherita Beale: As we wrap up today, what is the single most important thing you'd want listeners to take away from this conversation?
32:09 – 33:05
Mayur Patel: I'll start by saying we've talked a lot about speed bumps. I think that's one big takeaway for this conversation is to add speed bumps. But something related to that, and Christine, you talked a little bit about this, is I think we as a society, and especially people in the U.S., we have always traditionally been skeptics of people in authority. We're built on questioning things. And I think investors and listeners to what the conversation we're having now is, we just need to have that mindset in the context of scams and specifically AI-enabled technology. I think we all have the ability to question authority. And I think what we just need to do is the authority in this context being AI, we should just question also everything that we would learn via AI-enabled search engines or conversations that we're having. So I think that would at least be my takeaway for the listeners.
33:05 – 34:06
Christine Kieffer: The adage of trust but verify just isn't sufficient anymore. I'm not saying that we need to go around distrusting everybody, but really need to have healthy skepticism. We need to be using multiple channels of verification and also really zoom out and say, what am I trying to achieve? Am I following someone else's suggestion just because it sounded like a good thing? But I wasn't even thinking about it when it came to me. So how do we zoom out and just stay focused on what our own personal finances are. Social media is public, but your finances are personal. And so you got to take a personal approach to each of these decisions. And I know you said single most important. So I'm gonna add just one more thing too. Scammers tactics are they're really just designed to deceive. And AI just makes it easier, cheaper, faster. So we all need to be working together in our own spheres of influence to tackle a portion of that problem, and that also means harnessing AI for good.
34:06 – 34:36
Margherita Beale: Great. Well, that's it for today's podcast. Christine and Mayur, thank you so much for joining us and for speaking on this really important topic. Listeners, if you don't already, please be sure to subscribe to FINRA Unscripted wherever you listen to podcasts. All of the resources mentioned today will be included on the homepage for the podcast episode. Today's episode was produced by me, Margherita Beale, and engineered by John Williams. Until next time.
34:36 – 35:11
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