Bastian Obermayer, 41, is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter and the head of the investigative department at Süddeutsche Zeitung. He received with his partner in crime Frederik Obermaier the Panama Papers. After seven years at Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazine, he joined the investigative team where he worked on the Lux-Leaks, Offshore-Leaks and Swiss leaks investigations, among others topics.

Obermayer has received numerous national and international prizes for his work including the Pulitzer Prize, the Georg Polk Award, the Henri Nannen Prize, the Theodor Wolff Prize and the German Reporter Award, and he has been named “Business Journalist of the Year, 2014” as well as “Journalist of the Year, 2016” (with Obermaier). In 2016 he was awarded with the prestigious Knight Wallace Fellowship.

Obermayer is the author of several books, for example about abuse in the German monastery Ettal, about a fraud scandal in the German automotive industry and, again with Obermaier, the international bestseller “Panama Papers”.

C. Steven Baker recently retired after 32 years at the Federal Trade Commission, 28 of them serving as Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Midwest Region in Chicago, Mr. Baker is one of the founders of the Toronto Strategic Partnership, developed to fight cross border fraud and work with international partners.  In June 2010 he received the Consumer Advocate of the Year award from the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators.  Steve is also the 2010 recipient of the FTC Chairman’s Award, the highest agency honor.  He was the recipient of the Better Business Bureau’s Torchbearer Award in 2016.  

Steve Baker joined the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C. in 1982 as a staff attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection, where he was engaged in Federal Court cases involving telemarketing fraud.  He later served as an attorney advisor to Chairman James C. Miller III and Chairman Daniel Oliver.    

Mr. Baker recently completed a term on the Board of Directors of the Council of Better Business Bureaus.  He is currently an International Investigations Specialist with the BBB’s of Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, Omaha and Oakland.  To date he has written seven in depth reports on consumer fraud issues, all of which have been featured on network news shows.  

In addition, Mr. Baker is the author of the Baker Fraud Report, a newsletter on consumer fraud that goes out around the world once a week.

Prior to joining the FTC, Mr. Baker served as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge D. Brook Bartlett in Kansas City, Missouri.

Mr. Baker is a graduate of Missouri Valley College and obtained his law degree from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1981, where he was a Note and Comment Editor for the Iowa Law Review.  He is a member of the bar of the State of Iowa.

Mr. Baker and his wife reside in Maryville, Illinois.

Jonathan has been with Mastercard since 2002, during which time he has held various risk management roles within the Corporate Security, Franchise Development and Franchise Integrity groups. Jonathan is currently a Director in the Mastercard Customer Compliance and Fraud Team and is responsible for a number of global customer compliance programs.

Many of the programs he manages,including the Business Risk Assessment Management (BRAM) Program, MATCH, the Global Merchant Audit Program (GMAP) and the Excessive Chargeback Program(ECP), focus on identifying and mitigating various risks introduced by merchants into the payments ecosystem, including illegal, brand damaging and otherwise deceptive behavior.  Jonathan also manages the Global Rules Investigation Program (GRIP), which enforces compliance with all Mastercard Rules that do not otherwise have an established compliance program, and the SAFE Compliance Program.

Peter Bayley heads Fraud Strategy for Visa globally, whilst also running European Ecosystem, risk which includes the control and prevention activities in respect of fraud, compliance and illegality in Europe. This means Peter’ has overall responsibility for developing and managing Visa’s payment systems and risk management strategy with the objective of mitigating risks to its clients and other stakeholders from losses whilst ensuring the integrity and reputation of the Visa brand.

Peter re-joined Visa Europe in August 2011, having previously worked in the company’s fraud management division between 2000 and 2008.  During the interim period, Peter ran Fraud Management for Santander in the UK. Peter has also previously worked at HSBC for 20 years in a number of roles including heading issuing fraud operations and acquiring credit and fraud risk. Peter sits on the Global Board of the Merchant Risk Council.

Hans Ulrik Staehr is the CEO of the market intelligence software company MarketScape. He has more than 15 years experience working with the largest financial and pharmaceutical companies in Europe.

Two years ago Hans Ulrik founded Munit.io, a company that is now a market leader in software for dark web investigations for law enforcement agencies. Hans Ulrik is security cleared and works with some of the worlds leading agencies hunting criminals on the dark web.

Iveta is one of the five women in executive positions at Bankingblocks where she holds the role of Compliance Director. Her legal background and passion for payments and compliance have had a significant impact on her career path and development. Her fintech journey has started at Adyen, a global leader in payments and acquiring where she has sharpened her legal and compliance knowledge as well as her managerial skills. At Bankingblocks she has grown from scratch and looks after her team, but also sets long-term strategic plans related to risk and compliance management.

Iveta is not only risk and compliance knowledge specialist but also an industry expert who always follows the emerging payment trends and their legal implications. From her position of the company’s Second Line of Defence Authority, she is responsible for maintaining the company’s regulatory compliance as well as the staff’s awareness of the potential threats such as financial crime and its impacts. Currently, Iveta is heavily involved in a crucial Bankingblocks project - Core Banking Compliance Module Implementation where her expertise is utilised to make sure the banking solution offering is fully compliant, efficient and future-proofed as the technology behind it.

Chris has over 13 years of experience in the payments industry with a breadth of roles and experience covering fraud prevention and investigations, transaction monitoring and customer verifications, merchant account underwriting, risk assessment and mitigation, policy creation and documentation, acquirer relationships, scheme and regulatory compliance, portfolio management and monitoring, and other operational areas covering the merchant lifecycle, all driven towards organisational success. Since transitioning from his role as Director of Underwriting in 2014, Chris has brought his risk-conscious analytical approach and critical thinking to Bankingblocks (a Banking as a Service startup based in Amsterdam) where he leads up the payments department, overseeing the operations of card and other alternative and local payments for merchant customers (eCommerce and Point of Sale) and enjoys being a reliable touchpoint within the company for his advice and guidance throughout the application and merchant onboarding process.

Peter Naessens is acting General Director of the Belgian Gaming Commission. He studied law at the university of Brussels, criminology at the university of Leuven and social work at Campus Kortrijk. He has a large experience in legislative and regulatory advice and enforcement in the field of gambling. He coordinates regulatory gambling issues in Belgium and follows the European debate on the gambling market with special interest. He actively took part in public debates and wrote different articles related to gambling. He has been elected as Project Leader and Convenor to elaborate a European online reporting standard on the request of the European Commission. He also edited a report on lootboxes published on the website of the Belgian Gaming Commission.

Elfriede Sixt is a Certified Public Accountant. After becoming Corporate Partner wit EY, Vienna, she is now heavily involved as adviser and business angel in FinTech projects. She is Founder and Board Member of the Fintech Academy, Board Member of the Interplanetary Database Foundation and a Founding Member of the Tax and Accounting Work Group at thinkBLOCKtank.

Her most recent venture is the co-founding of the European Funds Recovery Initiative (EFRI) where she helps coordinate class action law suits against payment service providers who are involved in fraudulent schemes.

Hubert Rachwalski (CEO at Nethone) is a graduate of the HEC Paris (Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris) and the Warsaw School of Economics. He is a senior business executive with extensive professional experience earned in the world’s leading consulting firms - The Boston Consulting Group and PWC. He specializes in strategic advisory roles for financial institutions, IT companies and entities from the industrial goods sector and energy, has a world-class professional track record, including the successful business completion of numerous projects. At Nethone, Hubert is responsible for creating and operationalizing the company’s go-to-market strategy, coordination of key business development projects and building relationships with all stakeholders.

With over 15 years of experience working in the payments ecosystem, Kyle has built a solid reputation as an industry expert, thought leader, and influencer who is continually seeking new avenues for innovation and growth. Rising fraud, poor customer experience, falling transaction acceptance – Kyle has worked closely with some of the world's largest brands to help tackle these problems and more by using his extensive knowledge of payments technologies and regulations to develop effective solutions that deliver powerful results.

A regular speaker at industry events around the globe, Kyle is based in Austin, Texas.

Christian A. Chmiel, CEO of Web Shield, is responsible for the development and implementation of novel investigation techniques and research tools to identify fraudulent or brand damaging online merchants. Before he served as the Deputy Head of Compliance for a major German acquiring bank, and specialized in online fraud investigations, credit card compliance and underwriting.

He has served clients across a wide range of sectors, including financial services, IT software, entertainment, travel and health. Christian has undertaken assignments in the mainland Europe, Israel, Georgia, North America and the United Arabian Emirates. He brings deep experience in conducting investigations into fraudulent online merchants, risk calculations and forecasting methodologies to the table.

Christian is a lecturer at the Web Shield Academy and has written and co-written a series of publications about the various aspects of risk management, fraud detection and investigative methodology.

He has been honoured as one of the ETA's Forty Under 40 class of 2019.

Bill is a professional banker, a payments and risk specialist for over 25 years. He headed-up risk functions and special investigations in Lloyds Bank issuing and acquiring, following with acquiring and processing at First Data, and then insurance risks at RBS/Direct Line. He set-up, ran, grew and sold an outsource business that identified and managed liars in people's insurance and lost-card claims using teams trained in advance forensic psychology.

For the last 12 years, he has been diving into many other businesses: largely advising merchants, acquirers and others in the payment chain to help reduce risks and costs, to improve business and to make significant organisational change. The catalyst for change will often come from losses, from regulators or from a card-scheme challenge. He is a mentor for innovative payments start-ups and sits on working parties and panels for the UK regulators. He works across the EU, but often much further afield. Furthermore, Bill has degrees in Mechanical Engineering and in Banking, and is a member of the high IQ society.

For over 25 years, Kevin has been a business leader within the payments industry working with issuers, acquirers, payment schemes and retailers. More recently this includes a continued focus on payments acceptance, risk and compliance. Additionally works with processors, telco’s, solution providers and regulators, particularly in the areas of payments innovation, fraud, risk and compliance management.

He spent nearly 17 years at Visa in Europe and internationally, where Kevin held various senior management and leadership positions, focused on card programmes and acceptance product development and management across Europe, as well as global initiatives while seconded to Visa International. On returning to Europe, Kevin led the Visa Europe acceptance and acquiring development team before moving into risk management, as the Head of Fraud Management and Compliance.

Since leaving Visa in late 2011, Kevin has operated as an independent and trusted payments and risk management consultant and business advisor. He is a co-founder of the Association of Independent Risk & Fraud Advisors (AIRFA).