{"id":97562,"title":"BeeSafe AI — Fraud Prevention Platform for Trust-Based Scams","tagline":"Stopping scams before they reach your customers","body":"![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=97562\u0026key=user_uploads/3268572/9d3f5b62-fcc6-4c25-9f79-3c11e7a60a40)\n\n**TL;DR:** BeeSafe stops scams at the source by engaging with scammers to identify and shut down the fraudulent accounts they use for their operations. We are [Ariana Mirian](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arianamirian), [Nikolai Vogler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolai-vogler), and [Daniel Spokoyny](https://www.linkedin.com/in/spokoyny), three PhD AI \u0026 security experts, and we pioneered the first AI system for engaging sophisticated, trust-based scammers—now we’re scaling it into a product that helps:\n\n* **Financial Services \u0026 Crypto** detect mule accounts for AML compliance\n* **Telecommunications** block suspicious inbound messages\n* **Government Agencies** take down cybercriminal operations\n\n**The Problem: The $12B Visibility Gap for Financial Institutions**\n\nHave you ever received a text like this?\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=97562\u0026key=user_uploads/3268572/33ca436a-5f83-4652-ba59-bdba6898fb52)\n\nThis seemingly harmless message is the start of a sophisticated social engineering scam, sometimes referred to as “pig butchering”. Scammers strike up a conversation to build trust with their victims over time, eventually convincing them to authorize real-time, irreversible payments via P2P apps, crypto, or wire transfers:\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=97562\u0026key=user_uploads/3268572/1e5c6c13-4a22-4cb0-840f-8bc24ec3fdc8)\n\n$12B was reported stolen in trust-based scams like this in the US last year, according to the FTC. With multilingual LLMs, deepfakes, and voice cloning, trust-based scam losses are skyrocketing.\n\nFinancial Services, Telcos, and Government Agencies have little visibility into trust-based scams because attackers bypass traditional fraud prevention systems (e.g. behavior-based anomaly detection):\n\n* **Off-Platform Trust Building:** Conversations are held across multiple, end-to-end encrypted platforms, leaving any one platform blind\n* **Authorized Transactions:** Victims are manipulated over time into trusting the attackers so they authorize transactions\n* **Reactive Investigations:** Enterprises only know about the scams after a victim reports lost money (if they report it at all)\n\n**The Solution: AI-Powered Scam Disruption**\n\nInstead of blocking scammers, our system intercepts and engages with them to extract intelligence, including financial mule accounts, fraudulent assets, malicious domains, crypto drainers, and other related infrastructure.\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=97562\u0026key=user_uploads/3268572/59fdda02-ba50-4593-817a-68e8b7d5bca8)\n\nOur intel’s edge:\n\n* **Full Campaign Context:** we map the entire fraud operations, from initial message to financial exfiltration, allowing us to map patterns of attacks.\n* **Verified Data:** Our intelligence represents ground truth, and is not based on a probabilistic risk score. We minimize false positives by capturing details directly from the attackers.\n* **Real Time-Discovery:** all attacker infrastructure is discovered in real-time, preventing real-victim losses.\n\nWe provide instant access to high-fidelity fraud signals for B2B and deliver this to our customers in a way that does not add any friction to everyday users.\n\nWe have already enabled financial services and government agencies to identify and intercept scammers pre-transaction to prevent victim losses, with 10,000s of real scammer conversations across communication channels, and 1,000s of mule accounts + linked infrastructure already.\n\n**Our asks:**\n\nIf your organization and customers are facing trust-based fraud, we want to meet and see how BeeSafe can help.\n\nPlease reach out if you work in\n\n* anti-fraud, anti-money laundering, or compliance organization\n* consumer-facing fintechs, crypto exchanges, or telcos\n\nby sending us a message at [founders@beesafe.ai](mailto:founders@beesafe.ai) or visiting [beesafe.ai](http://beesafe.ai) to learn more.\n\n**About Us:** We are [Ariana Mirian](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arianamirian), [Nikolai Vogler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolai-vogler), and [Daniel Spokoyny](https://www.linkedin.com/in/spokoyny) a team of three PhD founders from Carnegie Mellon and UC San Diego. We wrote the paper that introduced the first AI system for sophisticated, trust-based scams. We bring expertise in building AI systems for security—grounded in core machine learning research and real-world cybercrime defense—with industry research experience from Google, Microsoft, Censys, and major DoD-funded programs.","slug":"PNa-beesafe-ai-fraud-prevention-platform-for-trust-based-scams","created_at":"2026-02-06T17:43:15.281Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T01:44:38.426Z","total_vote_count":21,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/PNa-beesafe-ai-fraud-prevention-platform-for-trust-based-scams","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=97562\u0026key=user_uploads/3268572/59fdda02-ba50-4593-817a-68e8b7d5bca8","company":{"id":31248,"name":"BeeSafe AI","slug":"beesafe-ai","url":"https://beesafe.ai/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/3a94eb8ceff47b3a9989e9c3c4f0bff0ac9c2e0a.png","batch":"Winter 2026","industry":"B2B","tags":[],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/31248"}}