6 × 6lock Podcast

A firm called Arup lost $25 million after fraudsters cloned an executive's voice and face on a live video call. On this episode, Mark Cooper, Chief Technology Officer at Sigma Information Group, joins host Mike Langford and co-host David Beisner (COO & Co-Founder, 6lock) to break down how deepfake fraud, QR code phishing, and vendor risk are threatening capital calls and distributions across private equity and venture capital — and what GPs, LPs, and fund administrators can do about it.

Topics covered: a four-month email hijacking that nearly rerouted a company's payroll, why your most trusted vendors are often your biggest fraud risk, how QR code phishing defeats two-factor authentication, the new FinCEN AML/CFT rule for private fund advisers (compliance date now 2028), and why security should mean a good employee never gets the chance to make a costly mistake.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

2:33 Meet Mark: CTO vs. CISO, and the Sigma Playbook

12:24 The Deepfake Reality (The Arup $25M Video Call)

17:17 The Call's Coming From Inside the House: Vendor Risk & Business Continuity

32:19 The 2FA Myth

44:25 The Regulators Are Catching Up (FinCEN)

50:57 Removing People From the Fight: Training & Zero Anxiety

Check out Mark's band, West Egg: https://westeggmusic.com/

Most private equity and venture capital firms assume their LPs are sophisticated enough to protect themselves. They're right about the investing acumen — but wrong about the operational risk. On this episode, Maria Bradley, Principal of Strategic Operations and Client Engagement at Valora Partners, joins host Mike Langford and co-host Todd Sorrel to break down the hidden LP vulnerability that fund managers consistently underestimate.

Maria spent nearly a decade running treasury, investor relations, and fund operations at Brown Brothers Harriman, Gen II Fund Services, and TMF Group before moving to the advisory side. Topics covered: why retired LPs stopped receiving cybersecurity training and what that means for your next distribution, how a two-factor authenticator tied to an email account becomes worthless the moment that email is hacked, why fund admin callbacks are no longer a reliable control in the age of voice cloning, and why independent valuation and verified money movement are solving the exact same problem. Plus: what Valora is building with its new proprietary platform, and what a prepared firm actually looks like in 2026.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

2:59 From the Operations Floor to the Advisory Side

7:47 What Valora Actually Does and Who It Does It For

11:08 The Regulation Tailwind

17:37 The Hidden LP Vulnerability

28:01 The Platform Moment

39:17 What Prepared Firms Actually Look Like

What does a legendary rock band's backstage rider have to do with wire fraud in private equity?

More than you'd think — and Chase McWhorter, Managing Director Americas at Institutional Real Estate, Inc. (IREI), makes the connection in a way you won't forget.

In this episode, Chase joins Mike Langford and Todd Sorrel to unpack what the famous Van Halen no brown M&Ms story can teach PE and real estate fund managers about operational alpha, LP trust, and protecting capital at the point of distribution.

Chase sits at the center of the institutional real estate universe. As the person overseeing IREI's Americas platform — spanning publications, events, data, and market intelligence — he has a 30,000-foot view of what separates the firms that raise a fund in eight months from the ones that struggle for years. And his answer might surprise you: it's not performance.

Performance, Chase says, is hygiene. It's expected. The firms winning LP capital today are the ones doing everything else well — the reporting, the transparency, the governance, the operational infrastructure. The ones who can't get their investor reports out on time aren't just annoying their LPs. They're raising a much bigger question: if I can't trust you to deliver a report, how am I supposed to trust you to wire my money?

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the top four or five managers raised more than 70% of all LP capital last year — and what they have in common beyond strong returns
• The "manila folder moment" — the story of an LP who showed up to an IREI editorial board meeting with printed reports from every manager he works with and spent two weeks manually reformatting them for his CIO
• What "operational alpha" actually means in today's market, and why 2023–2025 is the era where asset managers finally get the recognition they've always deserved
• The Real Estate Data Initiative (REDI) and the growing push to standardize reporting across the institutional real estate industry
• How the Van Halen brown M&M test applies directly to wire fraud risk — and why it's the first thing Chase thought of when he encountered 6lock
• $20.6 billion in private markets wire fraud in 2025 — and why only 12% of it ever gets reported

About Chase McWhorter

Chase McWhorter, CRE® is Managing Director Americas at Institutional Real Estate, Inc. (IREI), the market intelligence firm for the real assets universe. IREI has served the institutional investment community since 1987 through its publications, events, and data platforms — with a strict policy of editorial independence and no advertiser influence. Chase has been with IREI for nine years and oversees its Americas real estate platform.

Chapters

• 00:00 — Introduction
• 02:53 — How Chase McWhorter Got Here
• 12:24 — The Blackstone Effect
• 22:13 — The Spreadsheet Problem
• 30:52 — Operational Alpha
• 44:47 — The Brown M&M Test
• 51:04 — The $20 Billion Problem

Connect

• Chase McWhorter on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chase-mcwhorter
• IREI: irei.com
• 6lock: 6lock.com
• Questions or guest ideas? Email us at [email protected] or find Mike at @MikeLangford everywhere on the internet.

Before Brian Bank ever set foot inside a law firm, he spent 16 years as an institutional limited partner — committing capital to funds, sitting on LPACs, and reviewing more than a thousand fund pitches. Today he's the head of Strategy and Client Relations for the Investment Funds Group at Kirkland & Ellis, the highest revenue-generating law firm in the world.

That combination is rare. And in this conversation, he holds nothing back.

Brian joined 6lock CEO Todd Sorrel and Mike Langford to cover the full arc of what it takes to launch and grow a private equity fund, including:

• The rookie mistakes that kill first-time fund managers before they ever reach a first close (including the non-compete clause trap no one talks about)
• What LPs are actually thinking when you walk in to pitch — and why your deck is probably too long
• Why showing up in person still matters — the Alaska Permanent Fund / Juneau test
• Continuation funds and why they now account for roughly 25% of all private equity liquidity
• The retail and wealth channel opening up to private markets — and the cautionary tale that comes with it

Chapters:

3:55 He Sat Through 1,000+ LP Pitches — Now He Helps GPs Launch Their Funds

24:10 The Firm That's Seen More Fund Launches Than Anyone Alive

31:55 Rookie Mistakes: What Many First-Time GPs Overlook

40:20 What Makes LPs Say Yes?

50:27 The $30 Trillion Wealth Channel Is Opening to Private Markets — Are You Ready?​

Ray Mitchell has seen it all from the front lines. As CISO of Sigma Information Group, he gets the calls nobody wants to make — companies that just got hit with ransomware, funds that wired money to a fraudster, executives whose email was silently compromised for months before anyone noticed. In this episode, Ray joins host Mike Langford and 6lock CEO Todd Sorrel for a conversation that's equal parts eye-opening and practical.

Ray breaks down exactly how attacks happen — from the 800-pound gorilla nobody wants to deal with (email) to double extortion ransomware to AI-powered voice cloning that can fool every single person in your office. He also shares what firms are still getting catastrophically wrong, the two security measures that stop 99% of account takeovers, and why your most vulnerable link might not be inside your firm at all.

In this episode:

• Why bad actors go to work every day with a suitcase — and have performance reviews
• The sales meeting where Sigma's prospect got hacked in real time, mid-pitch
• Email is still the 800-pound gorilla — and most firms are running payments straight through it
• Phishing-resistant MFA and trusted device enrollment: the two things that actually work
• How Ray's team used an AI voice agent to trick client employees — and what it revealed
• The pizza place hack: why attackers always go after the weaker link
• Double extortion ransomware, whether to pay, and what to have in place before it happens
• "Data is the new oil" — and what that means for how you use AI in your business today

Chapters:

05:26 - A CISO's Origin Story

14:01 - The Front Lines of Cybersecurity

18:34 - Email - The 800-Pound Gorilla

25:37 - AI as a Double-Edged Sword

35:00 - Practical Defense / Weak Links

36:46 - Data as the New Oil

If you're a founder, a GP, or a portfolio company CEO, this is the episode you didn't know you needed.

Robert Koven has helped hundreds of companies navigate one of the hardest decisions in business — when to exit, who to sell to, and how to find the right partner. He's doing it at exactly the moment AI is rewriting the rulebook on valuations.

Robert is Co-CEO and Managing Director of JEGI LEONIS, one of the country's leading middle-market technology M&A advisory firms. He built Leonis Partners from scratch after stints at JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, and Lazard Frères — then merged it with the 37-year-old powerhouse JEGI CLARITY to form one of the most respected M&A shops in the game. He's been named M&A Investment Banker of the Year three consecutive years running.

In this episode, host Mike Langford and 6lock CEO Todd Sorrel — who personally hired Robert to sell his last company — sit down for an honest, unscripted conversation about what private markets really look like from the deal table.

Chapters

00:00 Teaser — The Party Analogy

02:22 Segment 1: The Man Who Sold Todd's Company

10:50 Segment 2: From the Big Banks to Building Something

18:28 Segment 3: How Deals Actually Get Done

33:12 Segment 4: Reading the Market — AI and Crypto

49:53 Segment 5: Knowing When It's Time to Exit

59:06 Segment 6: Finding the Right Partner

What does it actually mean to put planning first — before compliance, before tax prep, before anything else? John Mark Prewitt, CPA and Founder and Managing Member of Cohesion, joins Mike Langford and Todd Sorrel for a conversation that every founder, operator, and private markets leader needs to hear.

John Mark built Cohesion around a simple but rare idea: that the most valuable thing an accounting and advisory firm can do for its clients is plan first — and let compliance follow. In this episode he breaks down what that looks like in practice, why most firms aren't doing it, and what's sitting on the table for the clients who haven't had a real planning partner yet.

In this episode:

• Why estate tax is the tax most founders aren't planning for — and why John Mark calls it "not your problem, but your responsibility"
• The major changes to QSBS and Section 1202 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — including the increase from $10M to $15M exclusion per original issuer and the new partial exemptions at the 3 and 4 year hold marks
• How to make smart multi-year tax plans when the code keeps changing
• The most common (and costly) mistakes John Mark finds when a new client comes in after years of going it alone — including Section 461 loss limits, net investment income tax, and balance sheet blind spots
• The story behind building Cohesion — and why culture and empathy are at the center of everything the firm does
• Why trust is the foundation of every client relationship, and how AI-enabled fraud is raising the stakes for everyone moving money

Connect with John Mark Prewitt and Cohesion:

• John Mark Prewitt on LinkedIn
• Cohesion — cohesionco.com

Questions or guest suggestions? Reach us at [email protected]

CHAPTERS

0:00 - Welcome & The Moose Story

7:38 - What "Planning First" Actually Means

14:12 - The Estate Tax Wake-Up Call

20:30 - QSBS & Section 1202 Explained

24:24 - Planning When the Tax Code Keeps Moving

32:50 - The Most Common (and Costly) DIY Mistakes

36:47 - Building Cohesion & Why Trust Is Everything

What happens when a $64 million wire is ready to go out the door and you can't verify the account it's going to? Jeff Wilkinson has lived that moment — not once, but repeatedly — as the founder and CEO of two community banks he built from scratch and grew past $1 billion in assets each.

Jeff just closed the sale of Keystone Bank to Third Coast Bank in January 2026. Days before this recording, he sat in a Federal Reserve banker roundtable and told the room something that should concern every private equity firm, fund administrator, and CFO moving large amounts of money: the big banks have deliberately architected their systems to push fraud liability downstream — to community banks, to businesses, and ultimately to you. And the callback procedure everyone relies on? Voice cloning just killed it.

This is one of the most candid conversations we've had on this show. Jeff holds nothing back.

In this episode:

— Why the big banks won't pick up the phone when you need to validate a recipient account

— The $64M wire story that illustrates exactly what's broken

— How fraud is up 33% year over year — and why only 12% of it gets reported

— Why "your voice is your password" went from innovation to liability in two years

— What Jeff told the Federal Reserve about 6lock

— How hiring for fit (not for need) made Keystone more profitable faster than Pioneer

— What Jeff would do differently if he started a bank today

Chapters

00:00 Cold Open

01:00 Introduction

02:48 The Build, The Sale, and Doing It Twice

06:39 Community Banking vs. The Big Banks

19:04 Talent: Hire for Fit, Not for Need

27:44 The Banker's Inside View: Wire Fraud Is a Feature, Not a Bug

44:23 Identity Is the Answer

51:27 If You Were Starting a Bank Today

Connect with Jeff Wilkinson

LinkedIn | Keystone Bank | Third Coast Bank | Banking on Community Podcast

Questions or guest suggestions: [email protected]

What if the biggest threat to your firm's next capital call isn't a hacker — it's a nation-state intelligence operation running enterprise-grade AI?

On this episode of the 6 x 6lock Podcast, Mike Langford and Peter Steppe are joined by Vivek Ahuja, Director of FinTech & Financial Institution Partnerships at Persona — the identity verification platform that powers 6lock's KYC, KYB, and fraud prevention infrastructure.

Vivek's path to this conversation is unlike anyone else's in the space. He started as a nuclear submarine officer, went on to co-found a payments company in Southeast Asia, built fraud systems at Affirm when buy-now-pay-later had no rulebook, worked inside Marqeta, and led revenue at SentiLink — one of the country's most respected synthetic identity fraud detection companies. What he learned along the way: fraud has first principles, and most private equity firms are violating all of them.

In this episode:

• Why every new payment method creates a new fraud vector — and why AI is accelerating that cycle faster than ever
• The first principles of fraud that nobody teaches in school (because there's no PhD program for this)
• Why private equity sits at the most dangerous intersection in all of financial services: high dollar, high frequency, high urgency — and critically under-protected
• How 6lock and Persona work together to tie identity to every transaction before a dollar moves
• The shift from fooling humans to fooling the humans' AI — and what that means for agentic commerce
• Why the adversary targeting your firm isn't a teenager in a basement — it's an organized, state-sponsored operation thinking in ROI and probability of capture

Mike also references a recent episode with Stanton Ray of Columbia Threadneedle on the operational realities of moving billions in private credit — worth a listen if you haven't caught it yet.

And if you've ever been tempted to mess with a scammer who's texting you, Vivek has a word of warning. Mike references the legendary James Veitch TED Talk — funny as it is, Vivek explains exactly why engaging with bad actors, even sarcastically, is handing them data they'll use against you.

Connect with our guests: Vivek Ahuja on LinkedIn | Persona Peter Steppe on LinkedIn | 6lock

Have a question or a topic suggestion? Email us at [email protected]

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

02:30 - From Nuclear Submarines to The Fraud Lab

07:49 - First Principles of Fraud Protection

15:53 - Why Private Equity Firms Are Prime Targets for Fraud

20:17 - Identity Is the Infrastructure: How 6lock and Persona Work Together

25:10 - Are We Moving from Fooling the Human to Fooling the Human's AI?

34:24 - Nation-State Threats Are Private Equity's Problem Too

Alex Du dropped out of Stanford GSB five months before graduation to become employee #1 at Column. Six years later, he's COO of a nationally chartered bank that's rebuilding banking infrastructure from scratch.

In this episode, Alex and Todd Sorrel (CEO of 6lock) dive deep into what it takes to build a championship culture in an industry that's never been known for it. From owning 100% of your infrastructure stack to understanding why that 0.001% of edge case payments creates 90% of the value, this conversation is essential listening for anyone building in fintech or serving private markets.

Topics covered:

• Why Alex left Stanford 5 months before graduation
• The TAM + Team + Problem framework for early-stage companies
• How Column bought a bank and rebuilt the core from scratch
• Building championship culture: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner"
• The 0.001% game — why edge cases create all the value in payments
• Column's approach to AI in banking infrastructure

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

02:50 - The Stanford Dropout Story: When Plaid's Co-Founder Calls, You Show Up

09:44 - No One Likes Their Banking Partner And That's a Huge Opportunity 12:51 - Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

32:29 - Why Column Had to Own the Entire Stack

42:16 - The 0.001% Game: Why All the Value in Payments Lives in the Edge Cases

48:57 - How is Column Approaching AI?