“we are seeing a fundamental shift in the ‘blueprint’ of crime – the underlying tools, tactics and structures employed by criminal
networks,”
2025 European Union Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment
In 2013, just 35.4% of the global population were using the internet. This figure grew to 67.4% by 2023, marking an increase of over 90% in global internet usage over the last 10+ years. [1]
It’s not just ordinary people and businesses who’ve been part of this change. Criminals are harnessing the internet and other recent technological developments to expand their operations. In fact, they’re often able to do so more rapidly than law enforcement organisations, as they don’t have the same ethical and legal concerns.
From GenAI to messaging platforms with global coverage, new technologies have caused a distinct shift in the face of crime. Fraudsters are among the criminals exploiting digitalisation. The UK’s National Fraud Database reported 421,000 cases filed in 2024 – a record number and a 13% increase on the previous year.[2] Losses were estimated at over £1 billion, with 70% of APP fraud originating online.[3]
In this report, we explore how criminals are currently using modern technologies and the digital world to expand fraud operations.
Ease of communication
The internet and the technologies that have accompanied its rise have made it easier to communicate than ever before.
Ever adaptive, criminals are using these technologies to expand the reach and complexity of their operations. There are four main forms of communication to be aware of:
One example of this is Ghost, which was taken down by Europol in 2024. However, criminals remain nimble, building and finding new platforms as their current one becomes compromised.
Perhaps the most famous dark web marketplace was Silk Road, active from 2011-2013. It was shut down by the FBI, who discovered the true identity of the founder by investigating old forum posts until they found a post where he shared his email, which included his full name.
Sometimes these platforms require specialised hardware to access, such as Sky ECC phones. However, plenty are easy to access through most modern smartphones, for example Telegram.
By using these platforms, criminals can communicate with a large number of legitimate users. This means they’re often used for recruitment.
Crucially, the internet has made it easier for criminals to communicate, meaning that they have a wider reach for and easier access to recruitment, trade and even making financial transactions. The sort of communications that required a high level of technical expertise are now far more accessible to less tech-savvy criminals.
Cryptocurrency is one of the most popular investment fraud ‘products’ right now. In other types of fraud, criminals often adapt their requests according to global news. For example, they might ask for money to help them escape an ongoing conflict. This demonstrates how fast criminals can adapt their approach in this increasingly connected world.
Suggested reading: Fraudsters aren't the only ones using the digital world to expand operations. Other criminals are, too - read these reports to learn how.
Fraud is thriving in the digital age – not just because it’s easier to move money, but also because social media platforms make it easier to recruit victims than ever before and give criminals a global reach.
The advertisement features on these platforms make it straightforward for fraudsters to reach a wide audience and attract victims. For example, fraudsters can place an advert on a huge platform like Facebook, promoting what they claim is a legitimate, safe investment. Once someone clicks and inputs their details, fraudsters can then contact them personally, convincing them of the legitimacy of the scheme and to deposit large sums of money.
Here, criminals are exploiting the general public’s use of such platforms. Many people trust these sites, assuming that all adverts are vetted and legitimate. In fact, so many ads are submitted to these sites that illicit actors are able to slip through the cracks.
Furthermore, fraudsters use the messaging features on these platforms, as well as texting numbers directly. These direct forms of communication mean that criminals are able to form a close relationship with the victim. Then, they exploit this relationship to steal funds – whether through fake investment or by asking for financial aid.
It’s clear that fraudsters are exploiting digitalisation to target more victims directly. But beyond communication technologies like social media, how are they using modern developments to their advantage?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a huge topic of discussion at the moment, even in legitimate circles. While governments grapple with the difficulty of regulating these new technologies and companies scramble to use them to boost profits, fraudsters are already exploiting them to steal more money from more people. Let’s unpack which types of AI they’re using and how:
Importantly, criminals aren’t just using these technologies to defraud individuals. They’re also using them to defraud companies and organisations. For example, there have been multiple reports of employees receiving scam phone or video calls from ‘the CEO’. In the past, it might’ve been fairly obvious that this was a scam. However, AI has allowed these schemes to appear convincing, mimicking the CEO’s voice, image and mannerisms to trick companies out of millions.[4]
Beyond AI, fraudsters are responding to digitalisation by changing their main avenues of attack. Criminals used to rely on physical skimming to steal credit card details. Now, with more people shopping online, digital skimming has taken over. Of course, digitalisation hasn’t just changed the habits of shoppers – it’s also led to the development of the technology that facilitates this type of skimming.
Fraud isn’t just conducted by opportunists. Now, we’re seeing the rise of huge scam operations: organised, complex, and constantly adapting to the shifting global landscape.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) recently investigated a scam network which operated much like a legitimate company. They provided bonuses for employee performance, outsourced Marketing and HR, and used an array of modern software to log victim communications. These sorts of fraud operations are facilitated by digital advances and represent a new – and growing – threat in the fraud space.
Along with this increased sophistication comes an increase in the intersection between fraud and other forms of crime. In particular, there are growing ties with human trafficking.
In Myanmar, ‘scam compounds’ are growing in number. These compounds don’t include hefty bonuses for the employees, like the operations described above. Instead, individuals take up what they think is a legitimate job offer, only to travel to the new country and find themselves trapped in inhumane conditions, forced to defraud others online. If they don’t comply, the consequences are brutal.
These fraud operations demonstrate just how desperate criminals are to produce profit. They will exploit whatever means they have at their disposal – whether that’s new digital technologies or other human beings – to increase their profits and expand the reach of their crimes.
For those fighting fraud, these developments carry two key lessons:
“They virtually all depend on money laundering to conceal the sources of illegally obtained funds, so that they can re-invest them and further expand their illicit undertakings”[5]
When discussing fraud prevention, it’s important to consider what’s motivating fraudsters. For the most part, criminals conduct fraud with the main aim of making money.
However, in order to access the profits of their crimes, fraudsters must first launder the funds to make them seem legitimate. This makes anti-money laundering a vital component in fighting crime more widely, including fraud. Disrupting the flow of funds as they enter the legitimate market not only diminishes criminal profits, but it also provides a crucial entry point into unmasking and understanding the networks behind fraud.
Traditionally, criminals relied on cash-based methods for ‘cleaning’ money. As new technology has developed, though, so too have new modes of money laundering. Key developments include:
Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that use cryptography. They have grown more popular in recent years, both with legitimate and illicit users. As they operate using Decentralized Finance (DeFi), there is little oversight, which means that criminals can transfer funds within the blockchain without any intermediaries like banks.
However, with the right training and expertise, it’s theoretically possible to trace every step of a cryptocurrency transaction. That’s because much of it is built on blockchain technology, in which each transaction is recorded on an immutable ledger.
NFTs are unique tokens which denote ownership of a specific item, whether this exists in the real or digital world. Criminals launder them in a variety of ways, including overpaying for an NFT to transfer money or creating NFTs to trade to accomplices. Essentially, criminals can exploit NFTs to mimic legitimate transactions and, doing so, move huge amounts of money.
As with cryptocurrency, criminals are exploiting the lack of oversight and understanding of NFTs.
Regardless of the method criminals are using to launder their money, a common final step is to move the money into a traditional bank account so that it can be easily accessed. In other cases, they may use it to buy assets such as real estate or luxury goods to ‘clean’ it. It’s crucial that the organisations facilitating these accounts and transactions have stringent measures in place to identify and prevent money laundering, and that public sector bodies can collaborate with them to identify, investigate and prosecute individuals laundering money.
It’s likely that the combination of ongoing global hardship and straightforward access to technologies that facilitate crime have driven more people to use illicit activities as a source of profit. We might even say that crime is the most profit-motivated it has ever been. In the case of fraud, existing criminals are even selling ‘how-to’ guides, encouraging others to start scamming.
So far, we’ve discussed how criminals conducting fraud are using the modern digital landscape to expand operations.
What insights does this give us into how to disrupt these emerging illicit activities effectively?
Digitalisation is enabling criminals to operate on a truly global scale. Those fighting them must be capable of tackling this problem as a whole, not just the parts of it that occur within a particular area. This means effective collaboration across borders and between organisations.
In the case of fraud, many private sector organisations are unknowingly facilitating criminal activity. This includes holding criminal funds and advertising bogus investment schemes to the masses. Public sector bodies might be responsible for advancing fraud laws and prosecuting criminals, but it’s clear these private sector companies must also be involved in any effective response. This makes cross-sector collaboration increasingly key.
Digital technologies offer easier, clearer communication across a greater distance than ever before. While there may be legal and logistical barriers in place when it comes to cross-border and cross-sector collaboration, we can’t ignore the potential benefits of leveraging digital advances here.
Facilitating collaboration isn’t the only place where increased knowledge and use of digitalisation can contribute to fighting fraud. Since criminals are adapting to digitalisation, it follows that law enforcement must too. For example, many fraudsters launder funds through cryptocurrency. In theory, most cryptocurrency transactions are fully traceable – investigators must simply have the right knowledge and skills to do so. Here, understanding digitalisation can have a huge impact on our ability to combat this new type of money laundering.
A large proportion of fraud takes place in the online sphere. Investigators must be prepared to leverage publicly available internet data to track this activity and attempt to unmask fraudsters.
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) refers to the targeted collection and analysis of publicly available data, often internet data. It can be drawn from sources including:
It’s easy to see why OSINT is becoming an essential resource as more criminals turn to the internet. Historically a niche discipline, OSINT has nevertheless been used for years by many public sector investigators. As OSINT becomes increasingly digital and offers the potential for more direct insights into criminal activity, it needs to be widely understood and implemented by more investigators working to fight fraud.
Alongside exploring new techniques to counter digital crime, it’s important to consider adopting new technologies.
Naturally, those fighting fraud have more barriers to implementing new technology than criminals do. Criminals don’t have to worry about ethical implications or reliability: they can simply try something out and, if it doesn’t work, move on.
This difference gives us important insights into how counter-fraud teams should approach using new technology. Having more ethical and legal boundaries in place can be seen as an advantage, as it encourages considered, strategic use of technology. These teams shouldn’t use new tools just for the sake of doing so. Instead, they should invest in meaningful innovation and deploy new tools where they will have maximum impact.
AI has risen in popularity rapidly in recent years. Criminals are certainly no strangers to it, whether that’s fraudsters using GenAI to create convincing scripts or cyber threat actors leveraging deepfakes to infiltrate organisations.
But is it possible to use AI to counter criminals without sacrificing safety, integrity or ethics? Can AI achieve anything that investment in the right training can’t?
In order to understand where AI could fit within fraud investigations, we must first understand AI’s strengths and limitations. On the one hand, AI can ingest far more data than a human can, and at a much more rapid pace. It can also be designed to follow set logical steps. What it can’t do is think and make decisions like a human: AI chatbots might output human language, but that doesn’t mean a human mind is behind them. Understanding this allows us to then focus AI usage on the tasks it will be best at, for example:
Ultimately, the best use of AI will vary depending on what data an investigator is working with, the time they have available to them and the aim of the investigation. But there are some ways to identify a more reliable tool, regardless of use case. These are:
By avoiding these pitfalls, AI can increase efficiency and reduce human error.
Earlier, we discussed how important OSINT is for fighting fraud in an increasingly digitalised world.
The problem, though, is that OSINT is traditionally a highly manual technique. This becomes challenging when teams – already stretched thin – must counter increasingly complex and sophisticated criminal operations. Relying on manual techniques, there’s often not enough time to gain a real understanding of criminal activity before more damage gets done.
Luckily, modern OSINT platforms cut out much of the tedious manual workload, allowing investigators to derive deeper insights, faster. Such platforms assist investigators in cutting through the growing amount of digital noise, even as criminal activity grows more complex.
Here are some of the key features to look for in a good OSINT tool:
We’re Blackdot Solutions, leading providers of investigations technology in the economic crime space. Book a call with one of our experts today to understand how you can adapt to the changing digital landscape and continue to stop fraudsters in their tracks.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-individuals-using-the-internet
[2] https://www.cifas.org.uk/newsroom/fraudscape-2025-record-fraud-levels
[3] https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/news-and-insight/press-release/fraud-report-2025-press-release
[4] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-hong-kong-intl-hnk
[5] https://www.europol.europa.eu/publication-events/main-reports/changing-dna-of-serious-and-organised-crime