AI Can Clone You: Chris D. Sham Built Tech That Knows the Difference

Digital impersonation has never been cheaper, easier, or faster. From voice-cloned call-center scams to photo-realistic deepfakes that slip past routine "know your customer" checks, attackers are turning trust itself into an exploitable surface. When regulators warn that compliance rules are tightening and customers expect friction-free log-ins, the odds seem stacked against any early stage company trying to preserve security without sacrificing growth. For Chris Sham, chief operating officer of faceEsign, the answer is hiding in plain sight: the moment a user clicks "accept."

Turning the Click Into a Proof Point

Sham's signature contribution to securing digital transactions is BioConsent™, a cloud API that laces consent with live biometrics. "KYC, or 'know your customer' verification, is no longer a checkbox. It is the front line of cybersecurity," he says, stressing that every onboarding or high-value transaction should be treated as a potential crime scene, not a mere form field.

With BioConsent, a simple button press triggers a real-time facial-liveness test, optional ID upload, and simultaneous face-and-voice capture at the moment of consent. "BioConsent transforms any 'Accept' moment into a biometric trust event," Sham explains. The process runs cloud to cloud in under a minute and feeds compliance teams with tamper-evident audit trails. For a disputed six-figure crypto transfer, investigators would not be stuck parsing IP logs; they would have the customer's face, voice, and click timestamp preserved as evidence.

Building Security That Developers Actually Ship

Several vendors promise unbeatable identity checks only to bury engineers in SDK bloat and compliance red tape. Sham treats those pain points as a product requirement rather than an afterthought. "We built it to integrate like Stripe or Plaid, modular, fast, and developer friendly," he says, citing use cases that range from fintech and crypto exchanges to healthcare portals that need HIPAA-grade assurance.

His background helps. Before joining faceEsign, Sham scaled SaaS sales teams and ran technology operations, sharpening the instinct that security wins only when it serves a business metric. At faceEsign he blends that commercial lens with a technologist to technologist dialogue, advising product managers on where multi-factor biometrics add revenue by slashing fraud loss.

From Regulatory Burden to Competitive Edge

While most founders frame compliance as a cost center, Sham frames it as an accelerant. The European Banking Authority's impending mandates on strong customer authentication and the United States' renewed focus on AI-driven fraud make biometric consent unavoidable. Sham turns that inevitability into market leverage: early adopters who deploy BioConsent can advertise provable identity assurance, shortening enterprise sales cycles that hinge on risk committees.

"Legacy KYC is broken. BioConsent is what's next," he states flatly. That confidence stems from faceEsign's patented stack, which layers real-time facial authentication, liveness detection, behavioral analysis, and live audio-video capture into a single consent event, all certified under SOC 2. Each layer can be toggled via API so clients dial protection to the exact threat model without throttling user experience.

The Road to Click to Proof™

Looking ahead, Sham predicts that biometric consent will become a baseline expectation, much like Face ID normalized device-level authentication. In the next two years, he envisions every high-risk workflow, from tele-notarization to cross-border remittances, requiring a live-liveness check before proceeding. "Enterprises will use it for onboarding, approvals, and compliance," he says. "Consumers will expect biometric trust the way they expect encryption today."

Investors tracking synthetic-identity losses will appreciate that the market timing aligns with soaring AI-generated fraud. For Indie Hackers readers building payments, legal tech, or health data platforms, Sham's message is clear: treat biometrics not as a luxury add-on but as the cost of staying in business when anyone's face, voice, or signature can be cloned in seconds.

Follow Sham's insights on LinkedIn or visit his company's website.