How a Life-Changing Phone Call Defined a Fraud Fighter’s Mission

Financial crime is a global scourge, but its impacts are often felt most acutely at the local level. From romance scams to elder exploitation, these crimes can devastate people’s lives. As technology evolves, so too do the tactics of those who commit these crimes, challenging fraud fighters to stay a step ahead with advanced tools and strategies. Yet because financial crime is often viewed in the abstract—through accounts, transactions, and bottom-line losses—its human impacts can easily be overlooked. However, for fraud prevention expert and human trafficking risk adviser Freddy Massimi III, the human element in financial crime has his unwavering focus.  

“I love my work, but it can be emotionally heavy. The stories behind the scams drive me,” says Massimi. “When I read survivor testimonies or talk with scam victims who have lost everything, it’s hard to stay passive. Knowing that I can play even just a small part in preventing another person from being exploited, scammed, or trafficked keeps me motivated—even on the hardest days.” 

Massimi, a Certified Financial Crimes Investigator (CFCI) and Certified Anti-Money Laundering and Fraud Professional (CAFP), works at the intersection of anti-human trafficking, fraud prevention, and financial crime intelligence. His background in criminal justice and banking combined with his passion for protecting people, financial institutions and communities makes him a consequential contributor to the life-changing work of organizations such as: 

• The Anti-Human Trafficking Intelligence Initiative (ATII), a U.S.-based nonprofit that uses data, technology, and intelligence to fight modern slavery, human trafficking, child exploitation, and related financial crime. Massimi is the ATII’s Human Trafficking Risk Advisor and Taskforce Lead. 

• The Knoble, a nonprofit network of financial crime professionals working together to protect vulnerable people from crimes like fraud, human trafficking, and scams. (Massimi was recognized by the organization in 2024 with an Excellence in Human Trafficking Prevention award for his dedication to disrupting this nefarious form of exploitation.) 

• Operation Shamrock, a nonprofit dedicated to combating cyber scams, particularly sophisticated “pig butchering” scams operated by transnational organized crime groups. 

Through his volunteer work for these initiatives, Massimi says he is seeing positive momentum in how banks, non-governmental organizations, and technology firms are starting to collaborate more closely to combat financial crime as “they realize they can’t solve it alone.” He points to Friday night working groups for The Knoble, as one powerful example of fraud fighters, financial institutions, nonprofits, and scam survivors coming together to provide support, share intelligence and build scalable solutions. 

Massimi says one scam survivor in her seventies who is involved with the working group knits comfort blankets and scarves for scam victims—demonstrating how even small but meaningful acts can make a difference. “We just donated some yarn, as a group, to help support her work,” says Massimi. “It’s really amazing to be a part of that type of community togetherness.” 

A life-changing phone call—for both parties on the line 

Massimi’s passion to protect people is continually fortified through his everyday work as a fraud fighter, but his natural empathy and intuitiveness also helped set him on his current path. Early in his career, while working in frontline fraud detection for a bank, Massimi realized there was a much deeper story behind the data he was analyzing. As he tracked suspicious transactions and chased alerts, he could see patterns pointing to human trafficking, elder exploitation, and organized scams. “That shifted everything for me, and made me realize my work was about much more than stopping fraud,” Massimi said. 

One phone call, in particular, underscored the human side of financial crime to Massimi. While working at the bank, he contacted a client to discuss suspicious activity on her account. The client, a recent widow, explained she had been drawn into a long-distance romance scam that drained her life savings of $300,000. She told Massimi she was struggling to cope with the situation. Massimi’s call proved to be a lifeline, prompting him to contact local law enforcement to arrange a wellness check. 

“They were able to connect her with some mental health resources,” he said. “Thankfully, she is thriving today. But I will always remember that call. It drives me to be a fraud-fighter—and it’s why I’m involved with organizations like Operation Shamrock, which are dedicated to helping victims of these crimes.” 

Pig butchering a “national emergency” fueled by human trafficking 

The widow Massimi helped described herself as a victim of a romance scam, but she actually fell prey to a scheme known as pig butchering. She met the scammer on a dating site and, after showering her with attention and promises that he would visit her, he started to make excuses about not having enough money to travel. Wanting to help, the widow started sending him money. 

Eventually, after earning her trust, the scammer presented the widow with “a great investment opportunity” and asked her to put funds into a cryptocurrency exchange. That was how she lost everything in just six months—including her inheritance from her husband and money from her home equity line of credit. 

“Pig butchering is financial grooming. It’s emotional manipulation with financial expectation,” Massimi explains. “These are fake relationships, and scammers will financially drain their victims over time so they literally have nothing left. It’s becoming a national emergency.”  

What’s worse, he says, is that many people executing these scams are also human trafficking victims themselves. “Behind the scenes, trafficking victims working in call centers are enduring brutal conditions and being told by the criminal actors manipulating them, ‘If you don’t make this amount of money from your scam victims, we’re going to kill your family,” Massimi says. 

The dual-victim dynamic of pig butchering complicates traditional AML detection models, according to Massimi. He says financial institutions need to broaden their lens beyond compliance and look for behavioral red flags that point to fraud, force, or coercion. “If you focus on the sender in a suspicious transaction, you’re not getting the full picture,” he explains. “The real story lies in the behavioral data. Who opened the account? How has their activity changed? Is there evidence of coercion? If we don’t look for these signs, these scams will get worse and people will be killed. The time to act is now.” 

The road ahead: prevention, empathy, and empowerment 

Massimi says technology has a critical role to play in helping financial institutions of all sizes, including small and midsize community banks, to improve their ability to identify behavioral red flags that may signal not just scams, but also human trafficking. He points to the value of using AI-driven capabilities like behavioral analytics and contextual monitoring to spot suspicious patterns such as unusual login times, new device use, or sudden changes in contact information after onboarding. 

In addition to using advanced technology tools to enhance AML efforts and fight financial crime—especially since criminals make the most of the latest tech, too, to carry out their scams—Massimi suggests that banks, large and small, take the following actions: 

• Invest more in frontline training: Staff should understand the red flags of coercion, be equipped to speak with empathy to victims, and know how to escalate suspicious patterns with confidence. “Educate your people,” says Massimi. “Let them learn about the different typologies of check fraud, for example, and how scammers will act flirtatiously to create distraction.” 

• Break down silos between fraud, AML, and cyber teams: Integrated risk management requires real-time information sharing across key departments. Massimi recommends forming cross-functional response teams to investigate and act on complex threats with speed and precision. 

• Build partnerships with external resources: Engaging with organizations like The Knoble, ATII, or local victim support initiatives can help financial institutions stay attuned to best practices for fighting financial crime and gain critical insight into frontline trends and survivor perspectives. 

• Prioritize post-victim care:  Massimi says this should be a feature of post-response efforts, especially since so many victims experience shame and fear. “Make sure you are talking to them, and providing relevant education so they aren’t revictimized,” Massimi says. “Don’t just send a letter from the branch saying, ‘Hey, you’re a victim of fraud.” 

Massimi says commitment to these types of actions can help prevent scams and support victims, while also inspiring more people to become passionate fighters of financial crime because they can understand its human impacts better. “I am already seeing more professionals entering this field not just for compliance, but to protect people. And that’s where the real change starts,” he says.