Webinar Replay: Protecting your Program - The Anti Fraud Playbook for Contingent Leaders

The Anti-Fraud Playbook for Contingent Leaders

On September 10, Ropes founder and CEO Ken Schumacher joined SIA's Lori Telischak, Director of the CWS Council, for a live webinar on protecting contingent programs from fraud. He was joined by Kyle Coates, Global Contract Labor Program SVP at Bank of America Global Human Resources. The conversation covered how real the threat is, where current defenses fall short, and four moves program leaders can make now.

The panel's message was simple. Fraud is already in most programs. The ones that treat it as a priority are the ones bad actors skip.

The Public Woke Up to This

The Wall Street Journal's recent coverage of the North Korean IT worker scheme brought the issue into the mainstream. Ken said his phone blew up with texts from friends outside the industry. Ropes has been tracking DPRK activity for years and catches dozens of these actors every month in 2026. But this was the first time people outside staffing seemed to notice.

Kyle said the story landed hard in financial services. Banks were meeting with each other and proving their controls internally. "It was everywhere," he said.

The Numbers

SIA asked buyers which types of candidate fraud they had seen or suspected in their programs. 54% reported identity fraud. 44% reported process exploitation, like interview fraud or worker substitution. 28% said they hadn't seen any fraud at all.

Ken thinks that last number says more about detection than safety. Fraud takes a lot of forms. Some of it is a fake ID. The most common scheme today is bait and switch, where a real person with a real ID passes every check and then hands the work to someone else. Some fraud never causes a visible problem. A worker holding two or three jobs at once can go unnoticed for a long time.

Across Ropes customers, 96% saw at least one case of candidate fraud in the first six months of 2026.

Ken's main point was that these actors are organized and good at their jobs. "If you give somebody one check at a time, they'll always know how to beat it," he said.

Ropes runs identity, location, and skills checks together in one session. That makes it much harder to game any single step.

Leaning on Suppliers Isn't Enough

57% of buyers said they rely primarily on their staffing partners to screen for fraud. Kyle said that's a fine place to start. Bank of America started down this path in 2018. But he was clear that it isn't enough on its own.

"To answer your question directly, no, I don't think it's enough," he said.

Not every supplier has the same resources. A large technology staffing firm can run AI assessments at scale. A nonprofit or community college partner usually can't. So buyers need controls of their own across the full worker lifecycle.

Four Moves for Program Leaders

The first move is to verify at first touch. Ken said the work starts with suppliers, and most of them already have tools that can stop fraud before a submission reaches the VMS. He was surprised by how rarely buyers ask a direct question. "How are you keeping me safe from fraud?" He suggested buyers ask for proof next to each submission, not a description of process.

The second move is setting a real supplier standard. Kyle builds accountability into contracts and quarterly scorecards. Some Bank of America interviews use a three-way validation, where the supplier joins for the first minute to vouch for the candidate. Higher-risk divisions use identity technology to track photos from submission through onboarding. His team also watches for trends by supplier so they can have direct conversations when a pattern shows up.

"We want you to be successful, but you're not going to be successful with us unless we all can fight this together," he said.

The third move is re-verification after hire. "The work starts with the supplier. It doesn't end with it," Ken said. One enterprise Ropes customer asks workers to prove their identity again at a random time each quarter. It checks for the same person, the same device, and the same location. That customer catches about 3% bait and switch every quarter.

The fourth move is having a plan for when a case comes up. Ken said the first step is to act fast. Suspend access and document everything. Then investigate what happened in the short term and use it to tighten defenses in the long term. Bad actors share notes, so one case often turns into three more that look just like it.

Not every flag is fraud. Ken shared a story about a worker whose laptop pinged from Eastern Europe when they were supposed to be in California. They were on vacation. Kyle said his team also sees cases that turn out to be a candidate who oversold themselves, which is a performance issue. Bank of America runs a committee with cybersecurity, employee relations, and the contract labor team to sort these out.

Other cases are real. Ken told a story about an InfoSec team that found a North Korean worker and told the hiring manager he had to go. The manager said the worker was his best person and asked to keep him another week.

Train the People Closest to the Work

Kyle's biggest takeaway was about assignment managers. A program leader can't watch thousands of workers across different locations. The manager who works with a contractor every day will notice when someone is never on camera, or sounds different from one day to the next.

"That's your front line defense," he said. He recommends giving managers a clear list of what to look for, plus a single inbox or case process for reporting concerns.

Lori added a point from SIA's legal analyst. Put identity checks and re-verification in your rules of engagement so candidates know about them up front. That alone can deter people.

Remote Work Can Stay

An audience member asked if enterprises should go back to in-person interviews. Ken argued against it. Around 39% of candidates come up as high risk in a Ropes screen, and the technology to catch them exists today.

"If we are implementing purely return to office and these in-person interviews purely to solve this problem, that to me reads as a failure," he said.

Kyle offered a middle path. A fully remote worker could come in on day one to meet the team and pick up their laptop.

Make It a Priority

Ken closed with one idea. Talk about fraud with your suppliers, your team, and your candidates. Bad actors look for the most exposed programs. When a program has a plan and is visibly catching people, they move on.