A new report from BioCatch, which prevents financial crime by recognising patterns in human behaviour, points to the explosive and exponential growth of scams all around the world. The research pulls data from financial institutions serving nearly 350 million consumers on five different continents and finds scam attempts increased by 65% in the last year. That includes a 100% spike in voice phishing (vishing) scam attempts, a 63% uptick in attempted romance scams, and a 42% increase in attempted investment scams. SMS text-based phishing attacks also rose by a factor of 10.
“While these numbers are staggering, they probably won’t surprise anyone,” BioCatch Director of Global Fraud Intelligence Tom Peacock said. “Fraud and anti-money laundering team leaders at the world’s largest banks fight through this scamming onslaught every single day, while the rest of us have undoubtedly noticed a marked surge in scammy text messages, emails, phone calls, and social posts.”
BioCatch’s research finds purchase scams remain the most prevalent scam type in the world, with purchase scam attempts increasing by 14% in the last year.
The Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates consumers lose $1.03 trillion (and growing) to scams annually. In an announcement earlier this year, the U.S. Department of the Treasury attributed the bulk of the scams now plaguing consumers and their financial institutions to organised criminal operations.
“The financial system is being exploited to exploit people,” said Ian Mitchell, founder of The Knoble. “These crimes take many forms: Generational wealth stolen through scams, people enslaved in scam centers, images of exploited children bought and sold online, money moved across the world to fund other heinous crimes. The reality is that organised criminal activity is not only stealing money. In some cases, it’s also stealing lives.”
“These aren’t backroom operations or something happening in the shadows,” Operation Shamrock Founder Erin West said. “Entire cities are now dedicated to scams, operating openly, protected, and expanding. They’re boomtowns, but instead of producing goods, their industry is fraud.”
A lone positive from the report: BioCatch customers reported a 15% decrease in impersonation scams — attributed, in part, to the adoption of behavioural solutions. In July, BioCatch launched Scams360, providing unprecedented protection against those scam types banks have previously struggled to detect and prevent (romance, investment, business-email-compromise, purchase, etc.).
In addition to the report, titled 2025 Global Scams: Using behavioural and device intelligence to shine a light on social engineering scams, BioCatch today also released an accompanying case study from a banking customer in Europe. It shows how a seemingly ordinary set of transactions can reveal the devasting hold scammers can take over the lives of others — in this case a mother undergoing cancer treatment and her daughter, entrusted with managing her mom’s finances.
