Global financial fraud cost an estimated $442 billion in 2025 and is set to worsen over the next three to five years as artificial intelligence lowers barriers for criminals and scam-center operations spread far beyond Asia, according to INTERPOL’s latest global threat assessment. 

In its second edition of the Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment, INTERPOL said fraud has become one of the world’s top crime threats, ranking alongside major trafficking and money-laundering offenses. Member-states issued 54 percent more fraud-related Notices and Diffusions in 2025 than in 2024, while INTERPOL supported authorities in more than 1,500 transnational fraud cases involving reported lost assets of $1.1 billion, the report said. 

The international police organization echoed recent warnings that the fraud landscape is being reshaped by generative AI, deepfake tools, and “agentic AI” systems that can help offenders automate campaigns from victim reconnaissance to extortion demands. INTERPOL said criminals are now able to clone faces and voices from only seconds of authentic audio or video, enabling more convincing impersonation schemes, fake kidnappings, and AI-assisted sextortion. 

INTERPOL also warned that scam centers, once concentrated mainly in Southeast Asia, have become a global phenomenon. 

By late 2025, victims from nearly 80 nationalities had been trafficked into online scam compounds, the report said, up from 66 nationalities in early 2025. The centers have now been detected across multiple regions, including MENA, Central America, and West Africa, with many trafficked workers forced to run investment fraud, romance scams, impersonation schemes, and sextortion operations. 

Among the most prevalent fraud types globally in 2024 and 2025 were business email compromise, advance-payment fraud, impersonation fraud, investment fraud, identity fraud, and romance fraud, according to the organization. Sextortion is also rising sharply as criminals increasingly blend it with investment and romance-based scams, using AI-generated explicit images and deepfakes to increase leverage over victims. 

Read the INTERPOL report here