Who you’ll be talking to

Brendan advises fintechs and online platforms on payments fraud and identity verification. As a technical program manager at Scale AI from 2023 to 2025, he deployed ID verification and risk profiling to more than 10 million users in over 100 countries, with KYC/AML and OFAC watchlist screening and checks against government identity sources. Before Scale he co-founded Purpose Finance (Y Combinator W21), where as COO he ran finance and compliance and built the card and ACH fraud models. Earlier he worked on consumer lending at Figure and on credit risk and pricing models for Credit Karma’s personal loan business.

Dirk brings a decade of payments and identity fraud work and the statistical training of a physicist. At TikTok he cut the rate of 3DS challenges by 40% and VIP risk declines by 30%; at Amazon his rules and models reduced chargeback dollars by 60% in a major EU market; at Scale AI his detection rules stopped up to $100K a week in fraudulent payouts. A doctorate from Heidelberg University in 2012, for research at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, led to five years as a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech and Michigan State University, modeling experimental backgrounds and testing data for astrophysical signals. In 2017 Dirk joined AlixPartners in Atlanta as a consultant and data scientist, rising to Vice President. Since 2020 he has worked on identity and fraud at Equifax, buyer risk prevention at Amazon, payments fraud strategy at TikTok U.S. Data Security and, most recently, as Lead Technical Program Manager on Scale AI’s Trust and Safety team.