When Fraud Detection Works Too Late
The Wall Street Journal’s investigation into Polymarket, by Katherine Long, Caitlin Ostroff and Neil Mehta, is a useful case study in where fraud controls sit rather than how well any individual control performs. One detail stands out. At the peak of a February attack, according to the Journal, Polymarket’s payment processor was rejecting more than 80% of the deposits it handled as fraudulent, against an industry norm of roughly 1%. The processor appears to have been working well at the point in the stack where it had visibility. The larger problem was how much bad activity had already reached that point.
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