'Do not trust your eyes': AI generates surge in expense fraud
62 comments
·November 2, 2025PaulKeeble
We are not ready for the image and video fraud that is happening now and very much is coming. I can see why governments are starting to push for government issued ID to pervade into everything because its going to require a large amount of tracking to counter all the fakes. Rather than tracking everything a move to a usable trust and verifiable signature system is preferable from a piracy point of view and would still counter the fakes.
woleium
payment by stablecoin would prevent this
anotherhue
Receipt printers are about $20 so all that's new is that it's easier.
zkmon
The business world fully deserves it. When you produce nukes, you should also build nuke shield. No more horse fighting.
barbazoo
That’s a hiring issue, not an AI issue.
blibble
finally a use for AI
where's simonw's blog post about this
embedding-shape
I'd probably get hate for this or whatever, but things like this is why it's inevitable that businesses and governments will eventually force cryptocurrencies on people, because then purchases/expenses/bills and anything else can be tracked fully across the spectrum.
I'm not for it, don't want it, but I can't help myself but to see that as the future, as fraud ramps up even more, gets cheaper and businesses feel they have no other way to combat it except adding more tracking everywhere, something blockchains and cryptocurrencies excel at, for better or worse.
unlikelytomato
Alternatively, companies will just go back to corporate cards with very strict vendor rules. When vendor rules are not enough, they will go back to extremely tight per diem and simply not care of the expense was strictly real or not. I can't see any advantage to using a whole new currency and exchange that every vendor in the world is now going to have to support for this to be useful vs these simple measures.
embedding-shape
> these simple measures
I'm not sure either, it's mostly a guess I guess, more than a prediction. But if companies/governments can get more tracking, usually that's the way they move.
So if the companies that are complaining in the article implements your simple measures, does that mean the fraud problem they're talking about have been solved already? That begs the question, why aren't they just doing that then?
naijaboiler
Not solved but constrained. If I post you per diem. I no longer have to worry about if what you spend it on is legit or not
trenchpilgrim
> because then purchases/expenses/bills and anything else can be tracked fully across the spectrum.
Traditional banking already does this very well in most countries, through centralized systems with multiple redundant tracking and audit methods. Furthermore, crypto transaction fees are ludicrously high by comparision, and rarely offer the combination of "fast transactions" and "undo button" that traditional banking can provide.
embedding-shape
> Traditional banking already does this very well in most countries, through centralized systems with multiple redundant tracking and audit methods
So how does traditional banking solve the very problem the submission article is about? Companies seem to say this is an issue today, some seeing 15% fraudulent receipts, if traditional banking did these things well, why are these companies still seeing these issue?
Again, I'm not arguing that things will be better with cryptocurrencies, just that if we suddenly see companies and governments urging people to adopt cryptocurrencies, I'd totally understand why, although I'd push against it as much as I could.
trenchpilgrim
In my employers case they issue everyone a company card that has expense policies built in (it literally won't let you spend outside of policy). If you need to do a personal card expense it needs multiple levels of approval.
Zanfa
Another usecase that already works better without any cryptocurrency or blockchain involved.
In Estonia, the government offers public key infrastructure, so any party needing to prove legitimacy of documents from a 3rd party can get it digitally signed by the originator. For example, when you need a bank statement, you can just download a signed PDF (technically it's a zip, but whatever) that proves the legal entity (or person) that ensures it's legitimate.
embedding-shape
> Another usecase that already works better without any cryptocurrency or blockchain involved.
Agreed! But if I've learned anything in my years on earth so far, is that anything that can be misused, will be misused, and if companies and government can do something that adds more abilities for tracking people, they'll go that way. If it can work cross-border, give people the impression it's "the future" and let companies/governments get more power, then they'll continuously push for that future.
jt2190
Putting coercive governments aside, the cryptocurrency would need to allow for transaction reversals (a.k.a. “chargebacks”) like credit cards do today, and additionally need to have some kind of “know your customer” (KYC) capability, not just a public ledger that points to crypto wallet addresses but actual names and addresses, so that the “credit system” can identify fraudsters and, at minimum, mark them as such by lowering their credit score.
linked_list
Why would a government use cryptocurrencies though? You only need that if you have no single source of truth. For a government digital banking is enough and way cheaper. Unless by crypto you just mean cryptographically signed transaction logs or something.
embedding-shape
> Why would a government use cryptocurrencies though?
Once it happens in the future, probably because the already rich politicians have loaded up on some specific cryptocurrency they then try to pitch as the official currency for their country. Already happened once, and I'm sure we'll see more of it in the future as the overton window moves when the population gets older.
I don't think it's a good idea, I'm not eager to reach that future, but it's hard not to have the most negative view of the future considering what's happening in the moment around the world. I guess I'm too pessimistic not to see that as the eventual outcome.
spankalee
The much more easy thing is that they reimburse you only for what you charge to the company card. This is much more feasible now than it was even 10 years ago.
trenchpilgrim
Indeed, my employer provides everyone who needs to travel or expense a company card that only works when you are actively traveling and knows your spending policies, what places you're expected to be, etc.
I have had to occasionally expense something on a personal card and I had to get multiple levels of manager approval afterwards (not difficult, just explained the circumstance to them.)
3eb7988a1663
This seems part of the design - make the non-card reimbursement process so painful that everyone prefers to use the corporate card.
embedding-shape
How much does it cost a business to manage say 10K company cards, maybe even globally? Sounds like a huge hassle, compared to "Send us a photo of your lunch receipt each day then at the end of the month we reimburse you".
kaonwarb
Likely less than the sum of costs and losses associated with verifying photos of receipts.
trenchpilgrim
My employer contracts with a vendor that manages them. It's not expensive or difficult anymore. Even individual consumers can mint "virtual cards" with different time-based or merchant-based spending policies and limits for free, since like five years ago now. (https://www.capitalone.com/learn-grow/money-management/what-...)
abejfehr
Not very much when there are products like this: https://floatfinancial.com/blog/virtual-credit-cards-canada/
ghaff
I basically got out before this was a requirement but, yeah, to the degree that routine employee fraud becomes a material issue, locking things down becomes a grumble, grumble thing but it's just what companies will do.
exhibitapp
You have this flipped. Expense management systems with embedded company cards are an order of magnitude easier to managed and reconcile than dealing with thousands of employees' personal expenses and payouts
maxerickson
If it's daily, why not just do a per diem and forget about tracking it?
calmworm
Why would you get hate for it, because you are promoting cryptocurrency and conflating it with blockchain?
embedding-shape
Because any time you mention cryptocurrencies and/or blockchain, you end up with a ton of replies that either argues completely different points, or misunderstand how things work, especially on HN.
Your reply is a good example. I said "I'm not arguing that things will be better with cryptocurrencies" and you say "because you are promoting cryptocurrency". I'm sure some people like this way of conversing, but for me it's exhausting, like what's the point?
calmworm
The point is accuracy, clarity, and not muddying concepts. You can acknowledge the benefits of blockchain as an immutable ledger without bringing cryptocurrency into it. I don’t care either way, but saying you’ll “get hate” signals you knew the post was inaccurate or provocative - on a possibly throwaway account…
rafaelmn
You mean digital currencies - not crypto currencies.
And yeah they are already pushing for this for a long time already
embedding-shape
> digital currencies - not crypto currencies
Are those "digital currencies" not using cryptography? If so, they're a cryptocurrency, regardless how centralized or not they are. See Tether for an example of a centralized "cryptocurrency" (not "digital currency").
trenchpilgrim
> Are those "digital currencies" not using cryptography? If so, they're a cryptocurrency, regardless how centralized or not they are.
By this logic buying something on Amazon in USD, or doing a bank transfer from a Wells Fargo account to a Bank of America account, or paying a water bill is using a cryptocurrency hahaha
There were free websites 25-years-ago for doing this. I remember because I lost a gas receipt and it was a huge pain to get reimbursed for it so the next time it happened I used one of these sites….