Nasdaq Verafin’s 2026 Global Financial Crime Report estimates that fraud scams cost victims $62 billion in 2025, with losses compounding at around 19% a year over the past two years.
Investment scams lead. Fake trading platforms and crypto “opportunities” are among the costliest categories, largely because victims are coaxed into making repeated, escalating deposits.
Numbers vary wildly. Other studies put direct consumer losses above $400 billion. The difference comes down to definitions: what counts as a scam, which countries are measured, and how under-reporting is estimated.
Why AI matters
AI lowers the cost of every step of a scam: writing flawless messages in any language, generating fake identities, and cloning voices of executives or relatives. Fraud is becoming industrialised.
Whatever the true figure, every serious estimate points the same way: up.
Fraud Watcher analysis
Read numbers carefully. When you see a headline loss figure, check the year, the geography and whether it is reported or estimated losses. We link to the primary source in every story for this reason.
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