Synthetic Vendors: How Fake Businesses Get Through Vendor Onboarding | Product

Fraudsters no longer need to create a completely fictitious company to deceive organizations. Today, they can combine real business information, stolen identities, AI-generated content, fabricated documentation, and convincing online profiles to create synthetic vendors that appear legitimate during the onboarding process. These fraudulent vendors can bypass weak controls, gain access to your vendor master file, and ultimately receive payments that may be difficult or impossible to recover.

We'll explore how synthetic vendors are created, the techniques fraudsters use to make them look authentic, and why traditional onboarding processes often fail to identify them. You'll learn how gaps in vendor validation, authentication, data collection, and approval workflows can create opportunities for fraudulent vendors to enter your systems undetected.

Learning Objectives:

• Define what a synthetic vendor is and how synthetic vendor fraud differs from traditional vendor impersonation fraud.
• Identify the common tactics fraudsters use to create convincing vendor identities, supporting documents and supporting records.
• Recognize warning signs and red flags that may indicate a vendor is not legitimate during onboarding or maintenance activities.
• Evaluate authentication techniques, vendor validations, internal controls, and approval processes that help prevent synthetic vendors from entering the vendor master file.