Visa's 24/7 war room takes on global cybercriminals
The numbers that the payments giant grapples with are enormous.
Every year, $15 trillion flows through Visa's networks, representing roughly 15% of the world's economy. And bad actors constantly try to siphon off some of that money.
Modern fraudsters vary dramatically in sophistication.
To stay ahead, Visa has invested $12 billion over the past five years building artificial intelligence-powered cyber fraud detection capabilities, knowing that criminals are also spending big.
"You have everybody from a single individual threat actor looking to make a quick buck all the way to really corporatized criminal organizations that generate tens or hundreds of millions of dollars annually from fraud and scam activities," Michael Jabbara, Visa's global head of fraud solutions, said during a tour of the company's security campus.
"These organizations are very structured in how they operate."
The best-resourced criminal syndicates now focus on scams that directly target consumers, enticing them into purchases or transactions by manipulating their emotions.
"Consumers are continuously vulnerable. They can be exploited, and that's where we've seen a much higher incidence of attacks recently," Jabbara said.
Scam centers
The warning signs are clear: anything that seems too good to be true online is suspicious, and romance opportunities with strangers from distant countries are especially dangerous.
"What you don't realize is that the person you're chatting with is more likely than not in a place like Myanmar," Jabbara warned.
He said human-trafficking victims are forced to work in multibillion-dollar cyber scam centers built by Asian crime networks in Myanmar's lawless border regions.
The most up-to-date fraud techniques are systematic and quietly devastating.
Once criminals obtain your card information, they automatically distribute it across numerous merchant websites that generate small recurring charges — amounts low enough that victims may not notice for months.
Some of these operations increasingly resemble legitimate tech companies, offering services and digital products to fraudsters much like Google or Microsoft cater to businesses.
On the dark web, criminals can purchase comprehensive fraud toolkits.
"You can buy the software. You can buy a tutorial on how to use the software. You can get access to a mule network on the ground or you can get access to a bot network" to carry out denial-of-service attacks that overwhelm servers with traffic, effectively shutting them down.
Just as cloud computing lowered barriers for startups by eliminating the need to build servers, "the same type of trend has happened in the cyber crime and fraud space," Jabbara explained.
These off-the-shelf services can also enable bad actors to launch brute force attacks on an industrial scale — using repeated payment attempts to crack a card's number, expiry date, and security code.
The sophistication extends to corporate-style management, Jabbara said.
Some criminal organizations now employ chief risk officers who determine operational risk appetite.
They might decide that targeting government infrastructure and hospitals generates an excessive amount of attention from law enforcement and is too risky to pursue.
'Millions of attacks'
To combat these unprecedented threats, Jabbara leads a payment scam disruption team focused on understanding criminal methodologies.
From a small room called the Risk Operations Center in Virginia, employees analyze data streams on multiple screens, searching for patterns that distinguish fraudulent activity from legitimate credit card use.
In the larger Cyber Fusion Center, staff monitor potential cyberattacks targeting Visa's own infrastructure around the clock.
"We deal with millions of attacks across different parts of our network," Jabbara noted, emphasizing that most are handled automatically without human intervention.
Visa maintains identical facilities in London and Singapore, ensuring 24-hour global vigilance.
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a day ago
Qudan Rie: The 'Sympathy Tower Tokyo' Author on Language and Rhythm
After Qudan Rie's Sympathy Tower Tokyo won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize last year, the author created a stir by admitting at a press conference that she had used AI to write 'about five percent of the whole.' The novel is set in an alternative version of Japan, where the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were held on schedule in the New National Stadium designed by Zaha Hadid—a plan scrapped in reality for budgetary reasons. The novel's narrator and main character, Makina Sara, is an architect working on designs for a new prison to be called Sympathy Tower Tokyo, in a society marked by what she regards as excessive tolerance toward criminals. Even as she dedicates herself to the project, Makina struggles with reservations about the name of the tower and the concept itself. The novel centers on the project to build the tower, which Makina describes as the 'return of the Tower of Babel,' and depicts a world littered with inorganic language pumped out by generative AI, degraded by katakana coinages and impersonal terms bereft of tangible meaning. It asks probing questions about contemporary Japanese language and society. The book quickly drew attention in other countries after the award was announced. Translations have already been published in South Korea, Taiwan, France, Italy, and Germany. An English translation by Jesse Kirkwood will appear in Britain in August and in the United States in September, and the book is slated to appear in at least six other markets, including Russia. AI as Collaborator The statement that she had used AI for part of her novel took on a life of its own and caused more of a stir than she had ever imagined. Qudan says she did not initially plan to make strategic use of AI. 'The only thing I knew was that it was going to be a story about architecture and language. I never think too much about the plot in advance. I start writing, and then connect the story to my own life as I go. That's the way I always write. 'I started working on Sympathy Tower Tokyo around two years ago, just as ChatGPT was making the headlines. I tried it out myself, out of curiosity really. At the time, I was feeling uncertain about my future as a writer, and began by asking ChatGPT for advice. That's how it started. (© Hanai Tomoko) 'I asked: What can I do to get back up when I am feeling down? I just threw out this simple question, but the response was much more than I expected. The text that came back was comparable to an advice column by a psychiatrist. I thought it was fascinating. 'But as I interacted more with ChatGPT, I became aware of the ways in which the dialogue differed from a real conversation between two human beings, and I came to understand the limits of what AI could do. I thought if I could find a way to express in a novel the discomfort I was feeling at my interactions with AI, it might lead to an interesting chemical reaction. That's where the idea came from.' In fact, Qudan used her interactions with AI only as material for AI responses to questions posed by the heroine of her novel. The 'five percent' figure was something she came up with on the spot at the press conference. 'In interviews over the year or so after I won the award, people kept asking me about that number. Exactly which parts are the five percent? How did it feel to use AI for five percent of your novel? The questions kept coming. And I never felt confident that I'd answered them well. I didn't think I'd fully explained the sense of distance I felt between myself and the AI.' Then she was approached by an editor at the advertising magazine Kōkoku with a proposal for a 'collaborative project with AI,' in which she would write 5 percent of a story and generative AI would create the remaining 95 percent. It occurred to her that this might provide herself and the public with a clearer answer than her fumbling answers to interview questions, by allowing people to compare the '5 percent' AI of Sympathy Tower with the '95 percent' AI of the new project. 'And so, with that idea in mind, I decided to accept the challenge.' The short story that resulted, 'Shadow Rain,' as well as the lengthy dialogue and prompts that led to its completion, have now been published online. The results show clearly what it means for an AI to 'write a novel' at the current stage of development. Qudan herself has said in a related interview that, 'The AI didn't come up with any ideas far beyond human intelligence.' In the Beginning Was the Word Qudan has published four pieces of fiction since her debut with Bad Music in 2021. Each has been markedly different. 'When I sit down to write, I think about what kind of language the story needs, what style is best suited to the story I want to tell. I can't settle into the work until I have answered those questions to my own satisfaction. So certain words and phrases exist in my mind before I even start to write.' (© Hanai Tomoko) Where does this attitude toward language come from? 'I've been on this planet for 34 years now, and ever since I was a child, I've always felt there's something mysterious about life. That's part of what led to my becoming a writer, I think. I tend to use language as a way of proving I'm alive. I transform my life into language and immerse myself in thought.' Qudan says the ideas for her stories come to her in different ways. The concept for her second work, ' Schoolgirl ,' was to write an updated 2022 version of the story ' Schoolgirl ' by Dazai Osamu published in 1939. Qudan's version depicts a 14-year-old girl who broadcasts her thoughts to the world via an online video site about environmental issues and her relationship with her mother. In her third piece, the novel Horses that Write Poems , horse racing is a major element in the story, which depicts the history of the relationship between humanity and horses. It is studded with the names of famous horses and racing commentary. 'With that story, the words 'horses that write poems' came into my head one day when I woke up from a nap. I just felt intuitively that I wanted to use those words as the title to a story. I did quite a lot of research, and horse racing was one of many subjects I looked into to help me write the story.' In the case of Sympathy Tower , it was the phrase 'the return of the Tower of Babel' that came first—Qudan says she felt she absolutely had to use it somewhere in the story. To improve her understanding of her subject, she says, she read stacks of books by architects, and was also influenced by Mishima Yukio's famous novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion about the burning of the Kyoto temple Kinkakuji. 'Mishima Was My First Love!' Mishima has long played a special role in Qudan's life. When she was 14, she watched video online of a famously fiery debate at the University of Tokyo in 1969, in which Mishima contended with leftwing students from the All-Campus Joint Struggle League ( Zenkyōtō ). 'I really loved Mishima. He was my first love! His voice and the way he looked in the film just gave me a thrill, and then after I read his novels I fell deeply and seriously into his work. I loved everything about him, including his prose style. But since my introduction to Mishima was through his appearance and voice, every time I reread his books, I hear his voice playing in my head.' In her third year of junior high school, Qudan stopped attending. Her parents had divorced, and she had moved schools at a difficult age. Qudan's own analysis, looking back on it now, is that this may have been one of the factors that drew her to Mishima and his work. 'When I encountered him, I was starting to despair about my future. I was worried that because I'd been absent so often, I wouldn't be able to graduate or go on to high school. 'It was a hard time. I had no friends I could turn to, and the burden was too heavy for me at 14. I didn't talk to any other children my age, and my most meaningful communication was with books. For nearly a decade, I communicated day in and day out mostly with dead people—Mishima foremost among them.' This memory of her childhood self, desperately trying to find a way to mend her parents' broken relationship and the breakdown in communication, alongside her feelings of disappointment and failure, have stayed with her. 'That might be part of what made me so interested in language and communication,' she says. (© Hanai Tomoko) Rhythm More Important than Literal Meaning in Translation Over the past few years, Qudan has become an enthusiastic gym-goer, inspired by the example of Mishima, who began serious bodybuilding when he was 30. She believes there is a close relationship between the body and literary style, and is convinced that her prose has changed as her body has become leaner and more honed. She is also a music lover, listening to everything from classical to hip-hop. Just as with music, she says, 'in writing too, rhythm is vital.' Given that Qudan is so particular about language and style, how does she feel about translation, now that her novel is appearing in so many different languages around the world? 'When I met Jesse Kirkwood [who translated Sympathy Tower Tokyo into English] last year, I told him I wanted him to prioritize the rhythm of the English, even if some of the meaning from the original text might be lost. 'I don't have big hang-ups about accuracy. Readability in English is much more important. Jesse had already translated a short story of mine.' (' Planet Her, or the Oldest Female Rapper in the World.') In that story, it would have been impossible to translate all the Japanese rhymes, so in that sense it's not faithful to the original. But I felt he was sensitive to the rhythm. When I understood that he was thinking seriously about the rhythmical demands of English, I knew I could trust him absolutely as a translator.' Tōkyō to dōjōtō (left) and Sympathy Tower Tokyo , the English translation due to be published in August. (Courtesty Shinchōsha) Writing by Japanese women has been attracting attention overseas in recent years. At first, even Qudan suspected that the widespread interest in translating her novel was thanks to a perfect trifecta of on-trend hot topics: 'AI,' 'Akutagawa Prize,' and 'Japanese woman writer.' But after attending events at book fairs in Taiwan and Italy this year, she says she has been struck by how genuinely enthusiastic her overseas publishers are about her work. 'My Italian publisher, L'Ippocampo, normally specializes in visual and children's books. They rarely publish novels, and this was obviously the first time they'd published one from Japan. I learned that the decision to translate and publish my novel came from the personal enthusiasm of an editor passionate about Japanese culture and literature. That really made me appreciate how vital such passion is to the process of translating and publishing a work in another country.' What kind of rhythms will Sympathy Tower Tokyo beat out in languages worldwide? And what surprising topics will Qudan turn to next to delight her readers? We look forward to her next imaginative journey. Referenced Works Works by Qudan Rie mentioned in the text: Tōkyō to dōjōtō is translated as Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Jesse Kirkwood is translated as by Jesse Kirkwood 'Kage no ame' (Shadow Rain) has no English translation Schoolgirl and Warui ongaku are translated as Schoolgirl and Bad Music by Haydn Trowell and published together as Schoolgirl and are translated as and by Haydn Trowell and published together as Shi o kaku uma (Horses that Write Poems) has no English translation (Horses that Write Poems) has no English translation 'Planet Her: Arui wa saiko no fimēru rappā' is translated as 'Planet Her, or the Oldest Female Rapper in the World' by Jesse Kirkwood Joseito by Dazai Osamu is translated as Schoolgirl by Allison Markin Powell by Dazai Osamu is translated as by Allison Markin Powell Kinkakuji by Mishima Yukio is translated as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Ivan Morris. (Originally written in Japanese by Kimie Itakura of and published on July 18, 2025. Banner image: Qudan Rie on the roof of the Shinchōsha building in Shinjuku, Tokyo. © Hanai Tomoko.)
Japan Times
a day ago
- Japan Times
Senior 'JP Dragon' crime ring member jailed for 42 months
The Tokyo District Court on Tuesday sentenced a senior member of the "JP Dragon" crime ring based in the Philippines to three years and six months in prison for fraud. Tomohiro Koyama, 51, is believed to be the third-highest-ranking member of the ring comprising Japanese nationals. He is a former member of another crime group led by Yuki Watanabe, 41, whose members used the pseudonym "Luffy." Watanabe has been charged with robbery resulting in death. Koyama was detained by Philippine authorities and extradited to Japan in November 2024. Presiding Judge Yasushi Fuke said that Koyama's actions were "part of an organized and professional crime and very malicious." "He played an important role so that the whole organization could carry out crimes efficiently," the judge said, noting that Koyama managed ring members as a leader of a team tasked with making scam phone calls to victims. "It must be said that the criminal responsibility is heavy." Fuke deemed a prison sentence of three years and six months appropriate, citing Koyama's remorse and full compensation to the victim. Prosecutors had sought a five-year prison term. According to the indictment, Koyama conspired with Watanabe and others in April 2019 to steal eight bank cards from a fraud victim in her 50s in Tokyo and withdraw approximately ¥700,000.
Japan Times
a day ago
- Japan Times
NPA white paper highlights crimes surrounding social media
The National Police Agency on Tuesday published an annual white paper highlighting trends of crimes involving social media and investigation methods for such offenses. In a special section of the fiscal 2025 report, the NPA noted that the spread of social media has made it easy for tokuryū loosely organized crime groups comprising anonymous members to contact ordinary citizens and commit crimes. In 2024, the number of social media-linked investment and romance fraud cases detected by police around the country exceeded 10,000, with victims defrauded of some ¥127.2 billion in total, according to the report. Social media is also used for recruiting perpetrators of tokuryu groups, as well as drug trafficking and child prostitution. The report outlined investigative methods such as "digital forensics" for extracting data from confiscated items such as smartphones and recovering information contained in broken electronic devices for use as evidence. Also featured are cryptocurrency-tracking techniques and the use of artificial intelligence for cyber patrolling. Pointing to challenges such as strengthening the system for cyber personnel development and addressing encryption technology, the report said police will step up efforts to develop new investigation methods such as officers using fictitious identities to approach crime groups and opening bank accounts under the names of fictitious parties with the aim to have crime groups use them so that the flow of money is monitored.
