The Authority Complex is the home to work exploring trust, fraud, power, risk, and resilience in modern systems. Part research archive, part public notebook, and part strategic commentary platform, it brings together writing, podcasts, keynotes, ideas, media appearances, and practical insights from working across financial crime prevention, behavioural science, organisational trust, and policy. Through a criminological lens, the Authority Complex explores how people behave inside systems, how those systems succeed or fail under pressure, and what organisations can do to design trust, resilience, and safety more effectively in an increasingly complex world.
April in Financial Crime: The Month Enforcement Started Dismantling the Architecture May 7, 2026 For most of the last decade, financial crime enforcement has functioned as a treadmill. Investigators arrest the operators, prosecutors charge the executors, regulators sanction the firms closest to the loss. The criminal infrastructure: the financiers, the
The Conversation About AI and Child Safety Is Half-Finished April 29, 2026 Last week, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner issued legally enforceable transparency notices to four of the largest gaming platforms in the world, demanding they explain how they are detecting and preventing the grooming and radicalisation of children on their services.
Trust Isn’t a Feeling Any More, It’s a KPI April 17, 2026 For years, trust was treated as something soft and intuitive in business – important, but hard to define and almost impossible to measure. Today, that has changed. Trust has become a hard‑edged business variable, with data linking it
74,000 Years Ago, humans were about to survive a catastrophic disaster… but financial crime is bigger. April 13, 2026 Around 74,000 years ago, a supervolcano called Toba erupted in what is now Indonesia. It was the largest known natural disaster in 2.5 million years of Earth’s history. The eruption ejected
What The Fork? April 1, 2026 Why Trust Has Become the Last Thing AI Can Fake Norbert Elias spent much of his career explaining something that most people experience but never name: that the rules governing how we behave in social space are never really about manners – they are
The Positioning Document: What It Is, Why Most Organisations Don’t Have One, and What It Costs Them March 30, 2026 When I ask a leadership team to show me their positioning document, I usually get one of three responses. The first is a brand guidelines deck – typically a PDF
Why I Keep Coming Back to the Classroom (and Why Fraud Teams Belong There Too) March 10, 2026 There’s something about a classroom that opens my mind and fills me with optimism. It’s right in that moment when people realise they’re allowed to slow down and think. Its a safe
AI, Authority and the Pentagon Deal: What Sam Altman Just Taught Us About Trust March 3, 2026 When OpenAI quietly signed a classified deal with the U.S. Department of Defense, it wasn’t just another tech–government partnership. It was a live‑fire test of whether a company that has built its brand
The Trust Recession: Why Authority Is the New Competitive Advantage April 1, 2026 We are not in a trust collapse. We are in a trust recession. It is quieter than a scandal cycle and slower than a financial crash, but it is visible in how customers, employees, regulators and partners
What are your real chances of being scammed in the UK? February 26, 2026 Most people believe fraud happens to other people. The careless ones, the elderly, the ones who “don’t understand technology.” Statistically speaking, that belief is… optimistic. Even within my close-knit circle, I’m often accused of scare tactics,
Procedural Injustice: The Hidden Cost of Fraud Controls February 18, 2025 A little while ago, I did a podcast with Chris Ward for the CCMA | Contact Centre Management Association (You can find out more info or take a listen here). Part of our conversation was about the role the
The Loudest Lie: How AI Turns Rumours into Facts (and why fraud prevention experts should care) January 19, 2026 Everton Football Club’s first competitive match at its new Hill Dickinson Stadium generated the kind of coverage that accompanies moments of sporting transition. A new ground, a strong performance, and an
When Uber Takes Cash Again, It Changes More Than Just the Payment Method January 8, 2025 During 2025, Uber quietly reintroduced cash as a payment option in some markets. On the surface, the move is framed as flexibility and inclusion. Not everyone has access to cards or stable banking, and
Personal Troubles; Public Issues December 9, 2025 Hosting Salv ’s round-table last week felt a bit like switching the lights on in a room most people never get to see, a room where the people who carry the weight of financial crime finally put that weight down for a moment
The Human Side of Insider Threat December 6, 2025 What Jodie taught us at Comply Advantage’s Catalyst event and why that stage mattered I’ve spent years arguing that fraud and financial crime aren’t just technical problems. They’re human problems that happen inside human systems. But there’s a difference between saying
Fighting Fraud in Real Time: Reflecting on the challenge November 18, 2025 Last week I joined IDnow TrustSphere event in Munich for a panel on Fighting Fraud in Real Time, a discussion that ranged from artificial intelligence to behavioural science, from document forensics to social protection. Fraud today is not
Fraud Is Evolving Faster Than We’re Measuring It – But New Intelligence Helps Us Catch Up November 12, 2025 Every year, we get a little clearer picture of what global fraud actually looks like. The patterns shift, the methods mutate, and the boundaries between “cyber”, “financial”, and “social” crime blur
Scam Design: How Online Products & Services Are Engineered for Exploitation November 3, 2025 Fraud is often framed as a story of villains and victims, with cunning criminals on one side, and naïve individuals on the other. But that framing misses something vital: scams are also products. They are designed,
Economic Abuse Must Be Seen.. and Stopped October 27, 2025 I need your help.. On the 10th December 2010, I walked away from a relationship that controlled every part of my life – including my money. I left with a bin bag, four children, and a deep determination to rebuild.
Most financial crime prevention systems are designed around protecting the majority, but criminals often target the vulnerable gaps left behind. This article explores how utilitarian thinking, rooted in the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, continues to shape fraud prevention, digital identity, and financial security design. Through a
Fraud prevention is no longer just a compliance or technology challenge — it is a behavioural and criminological one. This article explores how criminological theory, behavioural science, and fraud prevention by design can help banks and fintechs tackle account takeovers, social engineering, device theft, and unintended policy risks. From redesigning
Designing out financial crime means moving beyond reactive fraud prevention and building systems where crime opportunities are reduced by design. Drawing on criminology, behavioural science, and trust architecture, this article explores how financial services can use smart friction, human-centred design, layered defences, and interoperable safeguards to prevent fraud before it
International Fraud Awareness Week 2026 is an opportunity to move beyond generic fraud messaging and focus on real-world vulnerabilities that shape organisational risk. From insider fraud and staff wellbeing to mobile phone theft, APP fraud, and the responsible use of AI, this article explores practical, behaviour-led approaches to fraud prevention
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