TCCCFE Quarterly Training
"Understanding Merchant Services Fraud: How Businesses Become Victims or Perpetrators in the Payment Card Landscape
and Back to Basics ERM and Fraud, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. "
Virtual Training - September 10th,2025, 8:30am CST to 11:30am CST - 3 CPE
Understanding Merchant Services Fraud: How Businesses Become Victims or Perpetrators in the Payment Card Landscape.
8:30 am – 9:45 AM CST - Di Thomson
Speaker biography:
Di Thomson is a seasoned global compliance leader, Certified Fraud Examiner, and licensed attorney with over 20 years of experience in the Merchant Services industry. As a Senior Compliance Officer, she specializes in financial crimes risk management across banking and fintech sectors. Di brings a strategic, investigative mindset to complex regulatory environments, helping organizations navigate fraud compliance, and operational risk. Outside of work, she enjoys long walks with her three large, sociable dogs - who are always on the lookout for new bunny friends.
Merchant Services is a critical component of the payment card industry, enabling businesses to accept credit and debit card transactions. However, this space is also vulnerable to various forms of fraud - both from external bad actors and from merchants themselves. This session explores how businesses can become victims of fraud, as well as how some may knowingly or unknowingly facilitate fraud activity. Attendees will gain insight into the mechanics of payment processing, common fraud schemes, and red flags to watch for in merchant behavior.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the fundamentals of credit and debit card payment processing
ERM Back to Basics, the Good, the Bad, and The Ugly
10:00 am – 11:30 AM CST - Katherine E Robinson, GRCP, CFE, CAMS
Speaker biography:
Katherine Robinson has spent her career using her experience and three professional certifications to aid and educate those with boots on the ground in the risk management and anti-fraud professions by providing insights into the practical application of industry theory. By arming other professionals with valuable insights, she believes they will be able to make smarter, faster, and wiser choices sooner and aid their customers and communities more effectively.
She has worked in the banking risk and compliance industry for almost ten years and in the anti-fraud industry for over 15 years. She previously worked as a Forensic Accountant and Fraud Examiner for the FBI, then for the State of Washington as a Regulator over state-chartered credit unions, and now directly for banks and credit unions in their 2nd Line. She specializes in gearing up new risk management and compliance programs for organizations and expanding integrated Governance, Risk Management and Compliance capabilities. She holds licenses as a Certified GRC Professional, Certified Fraud Examiner and Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist.
She is the current President of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ Pacific Northwest Chapter, on the ACFE’s Chapter Leaders Committee, a leading participant in the ACFE’s mentorship program, and a public speaker for several associations. She teaches forensic accounting and fraud examination for Everett Community College and Rutgers University-Camden. She also does networking, consulting and coaching with other bank and credit union teams on their GRC functions, which ultimately fosters a industry cooperative of experienced professionals in integrated GRC. Most recently, she and her team accepted the 2023 RIMS Global ERM Award of Distinction on behalf of a bank for work they had done to improve and expand its ERM practices and operations.
Risk management frameworks often look polished on paper—but the reality behind the scenes can be very different. Too often, risk assessments evolve into bloated, burdensome exercises that no longer serve their intended purpose. Whether you’re just getting started, trying to revive a struggling program, or cleaning up a legacy mess, it’s time to go back to basics.
In this session, we’ll take a candid look at what works, what doesn’t, and what to avoid when building or rebuilding your risk assessment process. We’ll talk through common pitfalls, practical strategies, and real-world examples of both success and failure. You’ll leave with a grounded understanding of how to create a risk process that is right-sized, repeatable, and relevant to your organization—no matter where you’re starting from
Learning Objectives:
- Recognize the signs of an ineffective or over-engineered risk assessment process.
- Identify what’s truly essential when building a risk framework from the ground up.
- Simplify and streamline your risk documentation without sacrificing impact.
- Connect individual risks to broader enterprise risk categories in a way that drives action.
- Reboot a stale or burdensome risk process into something sustainable and useful.
