Fraud and Scams: How They’re Different, How They’re Not – And How FIs Can Fight

Caryn is the Regional Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Director – APAC for ACAMS, where she is the lead English speaking SME practitioner on AML and Financial Crime Compliance across the APAC region. Working closely with APAC and international colleagues, Caryn plays a key role in shaping ACAMS priorities, offerings, and activities across the APAC region.

Caryn brings to ACAMS a wealth of AFC global banking experience that spans Standard Chartered, JP Morgan, Clearstream Banking, UBS AG, ABN Amro and Bank of America. Most recently she was the Head of Financial Crime Compliance Controls, Surveillance Excellence with Standard Chartered Bank, where she was responsible for the end to end process, governance, and risk management of the group wide alert disposition process. Caryn’s expertise covers Client Due Diligence, financial crime business advisory, project management, governance, risk management, and the overarching financial crime compliance framework.

Samson Leo is currently the Chief Legal Officer of Fazz Financial Group and StraitsX (formerly Xfers), which are both high-growth “Fintech 250” companies. Since his time as co-founder and Chief Legal Officer in Xfers, he has grown Xfers from a 3-person start-up to a regional company with more than 200 people across Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam and Philippines, and now more than 600 people in the merger to form Fazz Financial Group. Today, he leads group legal & regulatory matters, across financial regulations, financial crime & compliance, AML/CFT, and strategic commercial deals. Additionally, Samson engages with MAS on the regulatory framework and changes for the Payment Services Act, most recently for the upcoming MAS regulated-stablecoin framework, for which 3 subsidiaries under the StraitsX brand have received MAS Major Payment Institution licences. 

Under Samson’s leadership, Fazz (StraitsX, formerly Xfers) has been recognised by the Ministry of Home Affairs, and has also received 8 police awards to date for continued efforts in fighting cybercrime. Samson was also awarded the NUS Outstanding Young Alumni Award and the LexisNexis 40 Under 40, with him and his team coming in as finalists for 3 categories of the ALB Southeast Asia Law Awards (2023,2024) and the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Asia Pacific (2024).

Mr Harsh Narula leads the Group agenda on Platform, Data Analytics, Digital transformation, and Financial Crime Surveillance operations of DBS’ legal and compliance function. His team combines analytics with leading edge technology to innovate against financial crime and to reshape the future of surveillance. Mr Narula is also responsible for digital transformation to drive both efficiency and effectiveness for legal and compliance functions too. Mr Narula has over 24 years of banking experience across business function, operations and technology, risk management functions besides legal & compliance function. Prior to DBS, Mr. Narula has worked at 4 different banks across multiple countries.

Michelle Tay is the Head of the Anti-Scam Centre of the Singapore Police Force. She leads in the SPF’s scam fighting strategies, operations and initiatives to mitigate the victims’ losses and disrupt scammers’ operations. She has 13 years of experience in investigation and operations and has led in several investigation operations and policies.