‘Scam centres’ by organised crime have been discovered across multiple regions, says the international police body Interpol in its second annual Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment.
These centres engage hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are forced to perpetrate online frauds. Victims from nearly 80 countries have been trafficked into online scam centres, with no continent left untouched, according to the document, released during a two-day Global Fraud Summit in Vienna, arranged by Interpol and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Attenders included Amazon, Chainalysis, Meta, Santander Bank and TikTok; and the Home Office minister responsible for counter-fraud, Lord Hanson. He said: “Fraud is now a global crime run by organised networks operating across borders and targeting victims at industrial scale. With around two-thirds of fraud affecting the UK originating overseas, we cannot tackle this threat alone.”
AI-enhanced
Interpol reports a surge in ‘AI-enhanced’ frauds. Generative AI has lowered the ‘barriers for entry’. Fraud is increasingly enabled by artificial intelligence tools, according to the assessment. Dark Web marketplaces offer applications which can clone voices and faces from mere seconds of genuine audio or video samples, enabling criminals to impersonate celebrities or associates of intended victims. โAgentic AIโ can autonomously plan and execute fraud campaigns.
Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said: โEnabled by artificial intelligence, low-cost digital tools and increased global criminal collaboration, we are witnessing the industrialization of fraud. It is vital to remember that the cost of financial crime is not just money โ it is peopleโs life savings, their dignity, and in the worst case, their life. Strengthening cooperation between law enforcement, the private sector and raising public awareness is key in tackling this global security threat.โ
Interpol, which describes the fraudsters as ‘highly organized, skilled and agile’, is launching Operation Shadow Storm, a task force funded by the Home Office.
Regions
While the task force is to look first at south east Asia, the assessment points to an ‘increasing nexus between financial fraud and terrorist financing’ across Africa. The assessment goes over investment, romance and other types of fraud, such as sextortion, a form of blackmail. Scam centres in Europe are assessed as resembling ‘boiler rooms’, an operation where salespeople use high-pressure, often deceptive tacticsโtypically over the phone or onlineโto persuade people to invest in fraudulent or highly speculative schemes.
You can download the assessment from the Interpol website.
