Evolution of Data Quality: Inside the Largest Fraud Study Ever Conducted with Henry LeGard of Verisoul

Welcome back to Intellicast! On today’s episode, Brian is joined by Henry LaGard, CEO and founder of the fraud detection company Verisoul, for an in-depth discussion on the evolving state of data quality and fraud detection in market research.

We kick off the podcast by having Henry share how Verisoul, a company built initially to stop banking and fintech fraud, has quickly become one of the most talked-about new players in market research. He details how the company came to be, and how they entered the market research industry in 2025 with zero clients and are now protecting nearly 100 million survey clicks per month across the industry. Henry explains how Verisoul’s advanced fraud detection platform has had such a rapid impact on the industry. He shares how the team applied financial-grade fraud-prevention techniques to survey data collection, enabling them to detect and block the most sophisticated forms of digital fraud, including device spoofing, cross-continental proxy traffic, and bot farms operating at scale.

From there, Brian and Henry dive into Verisoul’s newly released Market Research Quality Report, which Henry describes as the largest fraud analysis ever published in the industry. For the report, the team analyzed more than 50 million sessions across 3,700 mobile apps in 190 countries, using a new proprietary technology that can identify the exact app where each respondent originated.

Henry explains how this innovation was crucial in uncovering real patterns of fraud across the ecosystem, revealing which app categories generate the cleanest and riskiest respondent traffic.

• News apps were found to have near-zero fraud rates, as respondents were motivated by non-monetary rewards like free article access.
• High-risk privacy browsers, such as DuckDuckGo, and some entertainment apps, on the other hand, showed 3–4x higher fraud rates due to heavy VPN usage, location spoofing, and cross-continental proxy manipulation.

Brian and Henry also discuss how Verisoul’s findings challenge many long-held assumptions about data quality. While larger apps and panels tend to have lower fraud rates, older respondent sources didn’t necessarily perform better. The study also found that just five mobile apps accounted for more than 10% of all detected fraud, underscoring how small clusters of bad respondent sources can distort large portions of the industry’s data.

Later in the episode, Henry offers a perspective on the evolving sophistication of fraud, explaining that much of today’s market research fraud is human-driven rather than automated. Organized groups in low-income countries are using SIM card farms, aged burner domains, proxy networks, and more to appear as legitimate U.S. or European respondents.

Henry and Brian also talk about how Verisoul’s recently launched transparency initiative, a “fraud or not” ranking, complete with a lighthearted tomato-throwing Easter egg for bottom performers, is designed to help the industry recognize who’s getting data quality right. Rather than shaming providers, the goal is to encourage progress, reward transparency, and strengthen collaboration around fraud prevention.

To close out the episode, Brian and Henry discuss Verisoul’s creative marketing campaign, “We Smoke Fraud,” which debuted at the ESOMAR Congress in Prague. What started as a marketing stunt ended up earning the company some serious attention from venture capital investors.

For those who live and breathe data quality, this episode is for you.

Want to get a copy of Verisoul’s Market Research Quality Report? Download here: https://reports.verisoul.ai/mr-qualityreport-25

Want to check out the Fraud or Not Ranking list? Take a look here: https://rankings.verisoul.ai/

If you want to learn more about Verisoul, visit their website at www.verisoul.ai

You can connect with Henry on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henrylegard/

Thanks for tuning in!

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