The surging value of Pokémon trading cards has attracted organized-crime groups seeking to launder illicit funds through the largely unregulated collectables market, according to new reporting by The Telegraph.

Spanish and Swedish police last month conducted coordinated raids on a criminal organization in the Costa del Sol, uncovering an alleged scheme in which Pokémon cards were used to clean dirty money by buying up stock and reselling it to unsuspecting collectors online, the newspaper said Thursday.

Financial-crime expert Paolo Aprile told the news outlet that rising card values had transformed what he called “a nerdy hobby” into a prime target for money-laundering operations, in large part because the cards can be easily transported but are impossible to trace. A single card worth thousands of pounds can cross international borders without risk of interdiction, unlike bulk cash and precious metals. 

“It’s just a small piece of lightweight paper,” Aprile told The Telegraph. “So if I have just a few of them, I can move millions instead of having a suitcase full of cash.”

The market has expanded dramatically in recent years, The Telegraph reported. In February, U.S. YouTuber Logan Paul sold a card for $16.5 million, having purchased it for $5.3 million five years earlier. A Swiss collector is reportedly preparing to sell a 60,000-card collection valued by some estimators at up to £50 million.

The global market was valued at $15.8 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $23.5 billion by 2030, Bloomberg reported in April. The outlet also documented a widening fraud problem: Singapore alone recorded more than 600 e-commerce scams involving Pokémon cards since October 2025, with losses totaling at least S$1.1 million ($864,000), while a single fraud case in the United States saw scammers attempt to cheat collectors out of more than $2 million.

Prices are rising too, and that can be both a draw for criminality and a consequence of it. 

Roy Raftery of auction house Stanley Gibbons Baldwin’s told The Telegraph that speculative investors and social media influencers have had the single largest effect on price increases, indirectly raising the market’s appeal to criminal networks. Pokémon, he noted, is the highest-grossing media franchise in the world.

“If you’ve got unmarked bills, you can just go into shops and buy Pokémon cards for X amount and then resell them for double,” Raftery told the outlet.

Aprile called for frequent traders of high-value cards to face the same regulatory scrutiny applied to sellers of expensive artwork. Under existing UK law, galleries, auction houses, and private sellers of works valued above £8,600 must register with HMRC, conduct due diligence on customers, and maintain transaction records. No equivalent framework currently governs trading cards, The Telegraph noted.

“A criminal organization can exploit what is not yet under control,” Aprile said.

The industry is separately facing an uptick in smash-and-grab robberies of card retailers and fraud. Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), a leading card grading company, reported intercepting an estimated $200 million or more in fraudulent trading cards in 2025, including a 125 percent increase in fake Pokémon cards compared to the previous year, according to The Athletic.