He Protected $500 Billion, Then Went After Elder Fraud

What we talked about.

Matt Halperin spent nearly 30 years managing risk for a $500 billion asset manager before founding Act Two Financial, a tool built to help seniors and their families detect and avoid financial fraud. The idea began after a friend described how his financial advisor ignored his instructions and cost him 150,000 dollars, revealing a widespread pattern of advisors and scammers exploiting older adults. Halperin argues that institutional fraud and elder fraud share the same root cause, the slow building of trust before exploitation, whether by a broker or an online romance scammer. He founded Act Two in 2020 with engineer Tomas Meran and former chief operating officer Greg Corso, building a look but not touch system that shares transaction alerts with family members without requiring power of attorney or account retitling. The conversation covers why banks are poorly positioned to stop social engineering scams, how AI voice cloning has supercharged the classic grandparent scam, and how Act Two's privacy dial lets seniors control exactly how much financial information their families can see.

A former $500 billion risk manager built Act Two to help seniors and families stop financial fraud without giving up control.

The questions, and the answers.

What are you building with Act Two, and why should people care?

Act Two is a tool that helps seniors and their families avoid financial fraud and manage financial data. As fraud and AI evolve, everyone will need an extra set of eyes on their transactions to protect their life savings. The tool is simple to use and does not require power of attorney or retitling accounts.

You spent nearly 30 years managing risk for a $500 billion asset manager. What made you leave that to build this?

My last employer asked me to move to Luxembourg full time and I decided not to for family reasons. The real trigger was hearing a friend describe how his financial advisor ignored his instructions and lost him 150,000 dollars. I realized this was a widespread problem of advisors taking advantage of seniors, and I could apply my post trade compliance experience to build a product that protects them.

Institutional risk management and elder fraud seem unrelated. What is the through line for you?

Fraud is about building trust, and the same dynamic exists in institutions. A broker builds a relationship with a portfolio manager over time, then eventually tries to sell an overpriced or misunderstood security. Scammers do the same thing with a fake online boyfriend or girlfriend, slowly building trust before asking for money. Risk teams exist to catch that exploitation, and Act Two applies the same principle to protect seniors.

Was there a specific case or pattern that made this urgent rather than just interesting?

Once we started looking, we realized this problem does not get talked about much even though it is growing daily. About 10,000 people turn 65 every day, and seniors hold a lifetime of savings, making them prime targets. One in ten seniors will develop some form of dementia, which makes them especially vulnerable to exploitation.

What did you know from 30 years in finance that made you certain the industry would not solve this on its own?

Risk and compliance are cost centers, not revenue generators, so companies balance how much fraud they can tolerate against the cost of stopping it. With social engineering scams, victims authorize the transaction themselves, so banks see the transfer as legitimate and are barely liable. Losing a tiny fraction of transactions is negligible to a bank, but it is everything to the victim.

You founded this with two other people in 2020. What did each of you bring?

We needed an engineer to build the app and connect to banks, so we brought on Tomas Meran, who has about 35 years of programming experience. My other partner Greg Corso had recently been a chief operating officer at a software company and brought operational skill. I contributed the original idea along with my risk management background and experience presenting risk to people clearly.

Where is the line between protecting someone and taking away their independence?

We built what we call a privacy dial so account holders control how much their family sees, from full detail down to just a large transaction alert. There is also a no share option for accounts someone wants to keep fully private. Act Two is a look but not touch system, so family members can see alerts but never have the power to transact.

How does increasingly AI generated and personalized fraud change what you need to detect?

AI makes fraud faster and more convincing, letting scammers test stolen credit card numbers instantly or impersonate a bank professionally. The grandparent scam has gotten more effective because scammers pull grandchildren's names and photos from social media, and now they can clone voices using audio scraped from platforms like TikTok or YouTube. Even corporate treasury teams have been fooled by AI voice impersonation, so an elderly person is even more vulnerable.