Director - Enterprise Fraud & Investigations

CommunityAmerica Credit Union•Lenexa, KS

About The Position

The Director of Fraud leads the financial institution’s enterprise fraud prevention, detection, investigation, response, recovery, and continuous-improvement program. The role requires a thorough understanding of how fraud is perpetrated across an institution—from initial compromise or social engineering through account access, transaction execution, movement of funds, and loss—as well as where vulnerabilities may exist across products, channels, systems, processes, people, and third parties. This is both a strategic leadership and investigative role. The Director uses evidence, investigative curiosity, and pattern recognition to understand fraud events and translate findings into stronger controls and prevention. The role partners with Risk, Information Security, Digital, Payments, Operations, Compliance/BSA-AML, Legal, Technology, Internal Audit, and business leaders to protect the institution and its members or customers. The Director also serves as the organization’s fraud subject-matter expert and builds a high-performing team of investigators and fraud professionals.

Requirements

Significant progressive experience in fraud prevention, detection, and investigations within a bank, credit union, payments company, fintech, or other regulated financial institution.
Demonstrated direct experience conducting and/or leading complex financial fraud investigations.
Deep understanding of fraud typologies, attack methods, and control vulnerabilities across financial-institution products and delivery channels.
Experience investigating fraud across multiple areas, rather than specializing in only one area such as card disputes.
Strong understanding of digital banking, payments, deposit products, authentication, transaction monitoring, and financial crime controls.
Demonstrated ability to identify root causes and translate investigative findings into operational or technology improvements.
Experience with fraud detection systems, case-management platforms, transaction monitoring, and data analysis.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex fraud events clearly to executives and nontechnical audiences.
Demonstrated experience leading teams and collaborating across organizational boundaries.

Nice To Haves

Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) through the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners; described as strongly preferred/required.
Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS).
Certified AML and Fraud Professional (CAFP).
Certified Financial Crimes Investigator or comparable financial-crime/investigative certification.
Relevant cybercrime, digital forensics, payments, or investigative credentials.

Responsibilities

Develop and lead a comprehensive enterprise fraud program covering prevention, detection, investigation, response, recovery, and continuous improvement.
Maintain an enterprise view of fraud risk across products, systems, channels, processes, and third-party relationships.
Assess emerging fraud schemes, attack methods, vulnerabilities, and trends, and determine their potential institutional impact.
Establish fraud governance, escalation standards, metrics, reporting, and accountability.
Report fraud trends, losses, emerging threats, control gaps, and recommended actions to senior management.
Maintain expertise in fraud schemes affecting financial institutions and evaluate whether existing controls address known patterns and emerging methods.
Translate lessons from fraud incidents into stronger preventative and detective controls.
Lead and oversee complex fraud investigations from initial identification through disposition and, when appropriate, recovery or referral.
Develop investigative hypotheses and reconstruct events using transaction records, authentication information, system activity, communications, account history, device and digital information, and other available evidence.
Identify connections among events, accounts, transactions, devices, individuals, and behaviors.
Determine root causes, control breakdowns, and contributing process or system weaknesses.
Ensure investigations are thorough, documented, objective, and defensible.
Coordinate investigations with Legal, Compliance/BSA-AML, Information Security, Human Resources, and law enforcement when appropriate.
Establish consistent case-management and evidence/documentation standards.
Partner with Technology, Digital, Payments, and business teams to strengthen fraud detection capabilities.
Evaluate fraud alerts, rules, models, thresholds, and escalation processes for effectiveness.
Use data and analytics to identify patterns, concentrations, anomalies, and emerging fraud activity.
Monitor false positives, missed events, fraud losses, and other indicators to improve detection.
Ensure fraud systems and tools are understood and effectively used by the fraud organization.
Build, develop, and lead a high-performing team of investigators and fraud professionals.
Develop team investigative capabilities rather than relying exclusively on automated alerts or system-generated decisions.
Create a culture of curiosity, critical thinking, urgency, and disciplined investigation.
Ensure significant fraud events are quickly escalated and coordinated across impacted areas.
Conduct lessons-learned and root-cause reviews following significant incidents and drive corrective actions to completion.