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Session Descriptions

Teachable Moments in Fraud

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.

Teachable Moments in Fraud is an interactive session designed to strengthen the ability to recognize and respond to fraud risks impacting agricultural producers, rural businesses, and system institutions. This session blends real case studies, cyber enabled threat trends, and frontline fraud prevention practices sourced from recent fraud events, industry alerts, and emerging agricultural risk patterns.

Participants will explore the most common fraud schemes affecting borrowers today, including check fraud, mail theft, business email compromise, spoofing and phishing attacks, equipment purchase scams, wire fraud scenarios, and social engineering threats. Through scenario analysis and facilitated discussion, attendees will learn how fraudsters target agricultural operations, how to interpret suspicious situations, and how to take timely, effective action to reduce losses and protect customer relationships.

This session emphasizes building a culture of vigilance — one where employees trust their instincts, ask deeper questions, recognize behavioral and transactional anomalies, and encourage safe financial practices. Participants will leave equipped with practical guidance for responding to suspected fraud, communicating with borrowers, and escalating concerns through appropriate reporting channels, reinforcing the System’s shared commitment to safeguarding the financial well being of rural America.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

  1. Recognize key fraud indicators across financial, behavioral, and cyber channels. Participants will be able to identify red flags such as unusual payment activity, missing checks, spoofed or altered communications, pressured requests, mismatched contact information, and sudden behavioral changes — all common precursors to fraud in agricultural lending environments.
  2. Detect and interpret cyber enabled threats, including Business Email Compromise, spoofing, phishing, smishing, and vishing. Attendees will learn how digital attacks frequently initiate fraud events by impersonating trusted contacts, manipulating urgency, and creating high pressure situations that lead to unauthorized transfers or disclosure of sensitive information.
  3. Identify warning signs of equipment purchase and online auction scams. Participants will examine system wide patterns such as artificially low pricing, newly created websites, unverifiable business listings, domain inconsistencies, unreachable sellers, and high pressure wire transfer demands — all of which indicate elevated risk in remote equipment purchases.
  4. Apply effective, timely response steps when fraud is suspected. Employees will understand how to gather essential facts, independently verify information, advise customers to stop transactions when red flags emerge, and escalate concerns through the appropriate reporting channels within their Association or System structure.
  5. Foster a culture of vigilance across the Farm Credit System. Learners will be able to confidently ask clarifying questions, validate unexpected requests, encourage borrowers to adopt secure behaviors (e.g., online banking review, multi factor authentication), and reinforce awareness that early detection significantly reduces financial losses.