Best of the year: A Former Corporate Spy Shares The Art of the "Ruse" (Social Engineering) w/ Author Robert Kerbeck

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***This episode is a replay of an episode from March 7, 2023; dozens of loyal Fraudology listeners were asked which episodes should be considered the "best of the year" & both episodes with this guest were the most suggested***

Even if you don't fight fraud for a living - you will enjoy this episode! In this episode of Fraudology, host Karisse Hendrick sits down with Robert Kerbeck, the Author of the book "Ruse: Lying, The American Dream. From Hollywood to Wall Street" to talk about social engineering and how easy it can be to get closely guarded company secrets out of an employee through a simple phone call.

Robert lived a life straight out of a movie (And spoiler alert: his life story is on its way to becoming a TV show!). As an aspiring actor, Robert took a mysterious apprenticeship as a corporate spy. He learned fairly quickly that in addition to impressions, he was great at reading people & connecting with them over the phone, to get them to unwittingly divulge some of the biggest secrets about their company.

As an actor, Robert had some unbelievable experiences as an actor like drinking with Paul Newman, playing the lead opposite Calista Flockhart in an off-Broadway production, taking J-Lo on a date to a Dodger's game, and working with OJ Simpson a week before the tragic double homicide of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson & her friend, Ron Goldman. But, he came to realize that his real success would be to become one of the world's most skilled, and deceptive practitioners of corporate espionage targeting top firms on Wall Street, Finance, and Silicon Valley to give their competitors inside knowledge.

Now that Robert is retired from that life, he's written his book, "Ruse: Lying, The American Dream. From Hollywood to Wall Street" to not only share his sometimes unbelievable stories but also to provide insights into the social engineering tricks that worked to compromise well-intentioned and well-trained employees & executives of some of the biggest companies in the world.

There is a lot that the online fraud-fighting world can and should learn from Robert, especially as top social engineers target most of your companies daily with similar attempts to gain the "keys to the kingdom" with their "rusing" techniques. But, knowing their tactics, and providing fun, yet informative training to your teams (especially customer service!), and implementing a few policies & procedures like some of the ones that Robert shares on today's podcast will all help guard your own company's secrets, revenue, and access to your customer's accounts against people with similar skillsets as the one Robert used to use in his former profession.

To learn more about Robert, to purchase his book, or to book him for a corporate training session, go to his website: https://www.robertkerbeck.com/

He's also active on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-kerbeck-12aa7a11/

Fraudology is hosted by Karisse Hendrick, a fraud fighter with decades of experience advising hundreds of the biggest ecommerce companies in the world on fraud, chargebacks, and other forms of abuse impacting a company's bottom line.

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She brings her experience, expertise, and extensive network of experts to this podcast weekly, on Tuesdays.