5 Facts You Need To Know About Financial Fraud

Fraud in financial services is no longer confined to forged checks or stolen credit cards—it’s a dynamic, fast-evolving threat fueled by technology, geopolitical instability, and increasingly sophisticated criminal networks.

This article was written by Julia Wendling and originally published by Visual Capitalist.

Throughout the Fraud in Data Series, we partnered with Inigo Insurance to expose the scale, scope, and shifting tactics behind financial crime in 2025. From $3.1 trillion in global losses to the rising use of AI deepfakes in scams, each piece pulled back the curtain a bit further on the growing risk landscape facing individuals, institutions, and governments alike.

Below, we’ve compiled the key takeaways from the Series, showing how data can be a powerful tool to stay ahead.

1. Tracking the $3.1 Trillion Financial Crime Pandemic

The global financial system is under siege. In our opening piece, we visualized how financial crime now drains over $3.1 trillion from the global economy—nearly equivalent to the GDP of France.

Organized crime emerged as the largest culprit, accounting for $1.96 trillion in illicit activity globally. Within that category, fraud alone is responsible for nearly $500 billion in losses each year.

The reach is global, with damages spread evenly across Asia-Pacific, EMEA, and the Americas.

👉 View the full breakdown

2. The Most Common Financial Crimes in America

The most frequent financial crimes tell another story: the everyday vulnerabilities that criminals exploit at scale.

Check fraud and purposeless transactions are among the top three, each averaging 500,000+ reports monthly. Other widespread issues include suspicious transfers, identity theft, and multiple transaction locations.

With most organizations feeling underprepared to handle these evolving threats, data-driven vigilance is no longer optional—it’s essential.

👉 See the top 10 financial crimes

3. The Most Costly Financial Crimes in 2024

In our deep dive into FBI data, we uncovered how $16.6 billion in losses were reported from financial crime in 2024 alone—a 33% increase year-over-year.

Investment fraud ($6.6 billion), business email compromise ($2.8 billion), and tech support scams ($1.5 billion) led the way in damages. Unsurprisingly, older adults (60+) were hit the hardest, losing nearly $4.8 billion last year.

Threats like romance scams and government impersonation also caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

👉 Explore the costliest crimes

4. Where Are America’s Financial Crime Hotspots?

Fraud isn’t evenly distributed—and our third piece visualized where Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) are most common across the U.S.

Delaware, South Dakota, and Utah top the list for SARs per 10,000 people. For Delaware, this was driven in part by business-friendly laws that can inadvertently attract bad actors due to the high concentration of businesses registered to the state.

Meanwhile, states like Idaho and Vermont saw far fewer reports—often due to smaller populations and rural economies.

👉View the U.S. map

5. The Top 10 Digital Heists

Is your money safe in crypto?

The technology behind some cryptocurrency networks can be a black box. But some of the largest digital heists didn’t rely on brute-force hacking, they exploited the weakest link in security: human trust.

👉 Explore the biggest digital heists to date

The Path Forward: Detect, Defend, and Stay Ahead

As technology evolves, so too do the methods of bad actors, and we’ve identified six trends that are shaping financial fraud in 2025: today’s fraud landscape combines emerging tools with old-school deception, creating a dynamic and highly adaptive threat.

Inigo’s Financial Institutions experts proactively track financial crime risks, uncovering data-driven insights to expose hidden threats and empower wealth protectors to act decisively.