CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS / ACCESS Newswire / September 29, 2025 / CYBERA, a global leader in scam prevention and mule account intelligence, announced today that it has been accepted by rigorous peer-review to present its latest research paper, “Send to Which Account? Evaluation of an LLM-Based Scambaiting System,” at the APWG eCrime 2025 Conference in San Diego this November.
Scammers are increasingly using generative AI (GenAI) technologies to produce highly convincing phishing content at scale, driving financial fraud and eroding public trust. CYBERA’s research demonstrates a novel, proactive approach: engaging scammers directly through conversational honeypots powered by large language models (LLMs) to extract actionable threat intelligence.
Over a five-month deployment, CYBERA’s system initiated over 2,600 conversations with real scammers, generating more than 18,700 messages. The system achieved an Information Disclosure Rate (IDR) of 32%, successfully capturing sensitive financial details such as mule bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets. This intelligence is critical for banks, payment processors, and law enforcement seeking to freeze funds and protect consumers before losses occur.
“At CYBERA, we believe that AI should not only protect people from scams but actively disrupt the criminal infrastructure that enables fraud,” said CYBERA CEO Patrick Peterson. “Our LLM-based scambaiting system represents a new frontier in proactive fraud defense – one where we can gather intelligence at scale and share it with financial institutions to stop scams before victims lose money.”
The research team included Hossein Siadati (CYBERA), Haadi Jafarian (University of Colorado Denver), and Sima Jafaikhah (UNCW). Their work not only demonstrates the potential of AI-driven engagement to improve fraud prevention but also identifies operational challenges, including the need to improve initial scammer engagement rates, providing guidance for the next generation of automated defenses.
“The collaborations of industrial labs and academic research centers are a hallmark of research presented at APWG eCrime symposia,” said APWG Secretary General and eCrime symposium founder Peter Cassidy. “Again, in this groundbreaking work by Siadati, Jafarian and Jafaikhah, we see the powerful research insights that proceed from cross-sector collaborations. All of us on this side of the cybercrime frontier are enriched by them.”
The APWG eCrime conference, held this year from Nov. 4-7, at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort, is a premier global event that brings together researchers, financial institutions, law enforcement, and security practitioners to address the global cybercrime problem. The peer-reviewed, publishing conference (proceedings published by IEEE since 2008) celebrates its 20th anniversary edition in November.
About CYBERA
CYBERA is a global mule intelligence and fraud prevention company helping banks, payment providers, and regulators protect customers from scams. By combining ethical scambaiting, AI-powered intelligence gathering, and real-time data sharing, CYBERA enables institutions to block fraudulent transactions, freeze mule accounts, and reduce the financial and emotional impact of scams worldwide.
About APWG
The APWG (Anti-Phishing Working Group) is an international coalition of counter-cybercrime responders, forensic investigators, law enforcement agencies, technology companies, financial services firms, retailers and brand holders, university researchers, NGOs and multilateral treaty organizations. Its directors, managers and research fellows advise national and sub-national governments as well as the United Nations (Office on Drugs and Crime) as recognized experts (under the Doha Declaration of 2010 and Salvador Declaration of 2015) as well as multilateral treaty bodies and industry organizations. APWG forges globally recognized conventions in data exchange and curates applied research, industrial policy and public awareness messaging programs at work around the world.
Media Contact
Claudio Staub
CRO, Co-Founder
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APWG: [email protected]
SOURCE: ANTI-PHISHING WORKING GROUP
