The new Netflix series The Return shows a bloody revenge plot within a fraud ring: after the daughter is tortured to death, the mother, dissatisfied with the death sentence for the ringleader, decide to take matters into their own hands. The show depicts how the criminals twist humanity, commit vigilante justice, and engage in brutal killings. In addition to the heartbreaking plight of the victimized children, the series also highlights a key element maintaining the fraud business model: the flow of funds through the banking system.

These accounts may be purchased by the scammers and used for layering, or may be accounts which haven't been used in a long time, hacked and repurposed. Interception of fund flows is essential to prevent fraud and reduce the rate of public victimization, and banks are the last line of defense. Automation and AI can manage suspicious accounts, which can be immediately frozen in the case of unexplained financial flows, or small, continuous, or short-term deposits and withdrawals.

These frozen accounts are highly likely to have been used by scammers, but they might also have been incorrectly targeted and belong to small businesses, group purchasing entrepreneurs, or securities traders. In that case, their owners are not only inconvenienced in their spending, but also have to go back to their bank to prove their innocence, leading to widespread complaints. The customer service staff can only patiently explain the situation, feeling equally aggrieved about the backlog of requests.

Banks are then caught between controlling suspicious accounts to fulfill their social responsibility, and potentially jeopardizing future business through increasingly stringent monitoring standards, leaving senior executives to deflect the public criticism.

Such dilemmas are a frequent feature of difficult issues involving social justice and values. Michael J. Sandel's magnum opus, Justice: A Speculative Journey, cites the classic trolley problem. An out-of-control train hurtles towards five workers, but switching tracks will sacrifice one person on the other side. As the driver, should you choose to sacrifice the one to save the five? Sandel aims to present a moral dilemma: is it better to save as many people as possible, or is human life so priceless that no one can be sacrificed?

The logic behind freezing accounts is the same logic applied by the train operator who switches the tracks. Fraud leads to the evaporation of assets and loss of life. Freezing accounts to prevent fraud by cutting off cash flow will certainly affect some people, requiring customers to spend their time proving their innocence. Of course, banks cannot keep cutting ever more customers off from their money. Therefore, as required by regulatory authorities, they will need to continuously improve their technology and processes, reduce wrongful cancellations, and simplify the unfreezing process to save customers’ time and costs.

Nevertheless, at the same, this temporary inconvenience might be the last line of defense for the savings of another family. These individuals located on the wrong track, exchanging their own temporary inconvenience for the economic devastation of others, just might deserve to be called “frozen account heroes.”