Senior Fraud Investigator

Job description

THE ROLE We are hiring a Senior Fraud Investigator to own the operational side of Creem's fraud and risk program: monitoring, investigations, case decisions, and merchant communication. Today this work is handled by external consultants, and your mandate is to bring it fully in-house and run it as a core internal capability, so that outside operational support is no longer needed. You will work hand-in-hand with the rest of the risk & compliance team, and together you will own the design of the automated fraud prevention program. Where the rest of the team is mainly focused on building and automating the controls, you are the human layer on top of them - you investigate what the systems flags, make the calls the systems cannot, and feed what you learn back into the rules and scenarios so the program keeps getting more proactive and more precise. As a Merchant of Record we face risk from both sides - merchants abusing the platform and end-customers defrauding our merchants - and your casework covers both. The operating principles are the same as for the wider program: act early rather than clean up late, keep decisions consistent, methodological, and audit-trailable, and keep the impact on legitimate merchants and end-customers minimal. WHAT YOU WILL DO - Monitor and analyse activity across the platform. Review merchant activity, transaction patterns, and risk signals to detect fraud, abuse, and policy violations - covering both merchant-led risk and end-customer fraud (card testing, stolen-card usage, trial and refund abuse, account takeover, and similar patterns). - Investigate flagged cases. Own the investigation and case review of flagged merchants and suspicious activity: gather and evaluate evidence, review supporting documentation, analyse relevant data points and connections, and reach well-reasoned and auditable conclusions on whether activity is legitimate. - Be decisive and own your decisions. Decide on merchant retention, restriction, or offboarding based on risk and compliance assessments — and make those decisions consistently, with a clear methodology and a full audit trail, so they hold up to scrutiny from partners, auditors, and the merchants themselves. - Communicate directly with merchants. Handle communication around compliance requirements, documentation and verification requests, and account decisions - firm and clear with bad actors, professional and low-friction with the legitimate merchants, who make up the vast majority of the platform. - Strengthen the controls. Recommend additional verification checks, monitoring measures, and risk controls based on what you see in casework, and escalate emerging fraud patterns so they are caught by automation the next time — before they require a manual investigation at all. - Support the prevention program. Contribute to the development and refinement of fraud detection rules, risk policies, and compliance workflows together with the rest of the fraud team, acting as the feedback loop between real cases and automated controls. - Automate and effectivize. Challenge everything - starting from the operational processes, their purpose and approach, ending with the case management tools and monitoring scenarios. Your job is to ensure that the fraud ops function operates smoothly and every manual control has a purpose and is based on pre-agreed methodology. - Document everything. Maintain clear documentation of investigation findings, decisions, and compliance procedures, so the operation is auditable, explainable, and doesn't depend on any single person's memory. - Build in-house competence. Take over the scope currently covered by outside fraud and risk consultants, and establish the internal operational capability and expertise, including hire or help with the hiring of necessary talent. WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - Flagged cases are investigated and decided quickly and within the established SLAs, consistently and with a documented rationale - bad actors are restricted or offboarded before they generate losses, chargebacks, or network program exposure. - Legitimate merchants experience minimal friction: false positives are resolved fast, communication is professional, and good merchants are not punished for the behaviour of bad ones. - Casework systematically feeds the automated program — recurring manual investigations turn into rules, scenarios, and verification checks, shrinking the share of fraud that ever reaches a human queue. - Merchant offboarding is methodological and audit-trailable, and operational decisions support healthy, sustainable PSP and card network relationships. - There is no longer a need for external consultant engagement(s), because the capability now exists in-house. WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR - Experience (typically 5+ years) in fraud operations, investigations, transaction monitoring, or merchant risk at a PSP, Merchant of Record, acquirer, fintech, or high-volume online merchant. - Strong investigative instincts: able to evaluate evidence and documentation critically, connect data points across accounts and transactions, and distinguish genuine fraud from unusual-but-legitimate behaviour. - Sound, defensible judgement — comfortable making retention, restriction, and offboarding decisions independently, and standing behind them when challenged. - Analytical skills: confident working with transaction data and risk signals; SQL or similar hands-on data skills are a strong plus. - Excellent written and oral communication — able to handle sensitive merchant conversations professionally and to document findings and decisions clearly. - Working knowledge of the compliance context: onboarding and verification requirements, monitoring expectations, and what PSPs and card networks expect from a platform's risk operations. - An owner's mindset: you can run a case queue autonomously, structure your own processes, and improve them without waiting to be asked, in a small, fast-moving team. NICE TO HAVE - Experience with fraud patterns specific to SaaS, AI, or digital-goods businesses (card testing, trial abuse, promo/refund abuse, reseller fraud). - Familiarity with KYB/underwriting, AML/CTF concepts, or merchant due diligence in a platform or marketplace setting. - OSINT and open-web investigation techniques for verifying merchants and tracing connected actors. - Experience working with case management and fraud prevention tooling, or with chargeback and dispute processes. - Prior team leading and/or domain ownership experience WHY THIS ROLE Fraud operations at a Merchant of Record is where judgement meets real stakes: every decision you make protects our merchants, our platform, and our standing with payment partners. You will not be a cog in a large review team — you will own the operation, shape how it runs, and see your casework directly harden the automated program. You will work closely together with the rest of the risk & compliance team onsite, with the autonomy and trust that come with being the person who makes the calls.