Fraud Statistics

70% of young adults ages 18 to 22 experienced an AI-related scam in the past year.

50% of the general population experienced an AI-related scam in the past year.

24% of young adults have been a victim of an extortion scam.

72% of African member countries reported the presence of scam centres.

14% of reported cybercrime cases in Africa in 2025 involved identity theft and financial fraud.

15% of executives are targeted by social media imposter accounts.

36% of restaurants experienced fraudulent refund requests as a form of social engineering in the past year.

30% of restaurants experienced AI-generated voice or video impersonating executives to authorize fraudulent payments in the past year.

Adoption of AI-powered fraud detection grew by 71% year-on-year.

Detected threats increased by 77% as fraudsters use AI to scale and personalize harmful messaging.

44% of security leaders use AI-based solutions for threat detection and fraud prevention.

19% of adults aged 18+ in the United States, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland have turned off voicemail recordings to prevent voice cloning.

85% of adults aged 18+ in the United States, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland say it is hard to tell a scam apart from the real thing, up from 66% in 2025.

88% of adults aged 18+ in the United States, UK, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland say it is becoming harder to tell what online content is genuinely human or real.

Account-problems scams are the highest-volume scam type, with 74% of victims sharing high-value personally identifiable information (PII).

25.6% of identity crime victims managed two or more concurrent incidents, up from 23.5% the previous year.

62.1% of attempted misuse cases involved new account applications, and 37.9 percent involved attempted account takeovers.

Younger consumers are twice as likely to fall victim to scams as adults aged 55 and older, with victimization rates of 20% versus 9.7%.

14% of consumers report falling victim to a scam in the past year.

Approximately 5.2% of SMS messages (about 1 in 20) exhibit characteristics consistent with scam infrastructure or coordinated fraud activity.

FAMOUS CHOLLIMA doubled its operations using AI-generated identities to infiltrate cryptocurrency exchanges, fintech platforms, and consumer banks.

34% of Americans cite credit card fraud as their top concern.

54% of Americans aged 35 to 44 are concerned about peer-to-peer scams.

More than half of Americans under 35 are concerned about deepfake scams.

Nearly 40 million U.S. consumers report being scam victims in the past year.

51% of consumers are willing to pay for scam protection.

19% of consumers report being scammed.

72% of small businesses experienced fraud, scams, or ransomware last year.

43% of affected small businesses say fraud makes it harder to accept payments.

71% of small business owners expect AI to make fraud more prevalent.

81% of fraud prevention, risk, and compliance professionals report an increase in mule-related activity over the past year.

More than 80% of fraud prevention, risk, and compliance professionals report that mule activity is detected reactively rather than prevented before suspicious transactions occur.

78% of financial institutions make improving mule account detection a high or top priority over the next 12 months.

Total ACH payment value increased 11%, creating a nearly 5-to-1 divergence.

A single low-cost device model drove 3% of all mobile account takeover attempts.

Phishing and transfer fraud accounted for roughly 30% of all manufacturing claims.

The average transfer fraud event costs roughly ten times more than the average email compromise in manufacturing claims.

Attempted ACH fraud value increased 52% in 2025.

More than 40% of people who lost money to a scam on social media said it started when they ordered something they’d seen in an ad

$1.1 billion, more than half the money reported lost to scams initiated on social media, was to investment scammers.