Fraud in the UK reached a record level in 2025, with 444,993 cases filed to the National Fraud Database, according to Cifas’s latest Fraudscape 2026 report. 

The sum marks a six-percent increase from 2024, extending the upward trend seen the year before. Cifas said the rise was driven largely by account takeovers and the misuse of legitimate bank accounts. 

Identity fraud remained the largest category, with 242,003 cases, but filings fell three percent year on year. Cifas said the decline reflected a shift in criminal tactics rather than any real easing of the threat, with fraudsters increasingly moving toward account takeovers, especially those targeting mobile phone accounts. 

The sharpest growth came in misuse-of-facility cases, which rose 43 percent to more than 106,000, mainly involving bank-account misuse. Account takeover cases also increased, climbing six percent to more than 78,000. 

Telecoms accounted for 62 percent those cases, up from 48 percent a year earlier. The association ascribed the shift to a jump in mobile-phone-related fraud and a 38-percent rise in unauthorized SIM swaps. 

Cifas also said fraud is becoming more digital, more organized, and more focused on exploiting existing accounts rather than simply opening new ones with stolen identities. Approximately four in five scams are now digitally enabled, and AI-powered impersonation, synthetic media, and fraud-as-a-service tools are making fraud more scalable and harder to detect, the organization said. 

Synthetic identities are becoming “industrialized,” with criminals building convincing long-term profiles that blur the line between real users and AI-generated impostors, Cifas warned. 

Read the Fraudscape 2026 report here