Fraud Leaves Fingerprints - Retired FBI Agent Dan Sigmond on Financial Crime, the Cases That Stick, and Why Your Business Probably Has a Problem You Don't Know About
About this episode
Retired FBI Agent Dan Sigmond discusses financial crime, trust manipulation, and the challenges businesses face in detecting fraud.
Retired FBI Special Agent Dan Sigmond returns to What's Working to discuss his 21 years investigating financial crimes, a remarkable story of how a previous episode of this very podcast helped crack a case, and his new private-sector firm, Special Agent Advisory Group. Dan shares how fraud always comes down to the manipulation of trust, offers vivid case stories ranging from a Jamaican lottery scheme to the "Pepper Spray Bandit" bank robber, and closes with a preview of his next topic: cybercrime as financial crime in a hoodie. Fraud is relational, not transactional. Today's scammers build long-term trust with victims — often elderly — before extracting money. The shift from one-time hits to slow, sustained manipulation makes detection far harder and the psychological damage far deeper. Most financial crime goes unreported. When Dan left the Bureau, only 40–50% of crimes were being reported, meaning billions in losses — particularly in business email compromise and cryptocurrency fraud — never make it into official tracking systems like the FBI's IC3. Internal fraud bleeds slowly. The most significant embezzlement cases Dan worked unfolded over years, exploiting trusted employees…
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