As we approach 2025, scammers are evolving rapidly, exploiting emerging technologies and shifting global trends to create more sophisticated and damaging schemes. From AI-generated deepfakes to the rise of third-party scam apps, the landscape of online fraud is set to change dramatically in the coming years.
Explore the top scam trends the experts at Scamnetic predict will dominate 2025, examining how cybercriminals will continue to adapt and what consumers and institutions can do to protect themselves.
Wealthy Americans Will Begin to Face the Threat of a Digital Arrest
Increasingly popular in Asia, criminals will find that the US is fertile ground for a relatively new and lucrative scam known as the ‘digital arrest’. An evolution of extortion, imposter scams, and ‘bail money’ scams, they threaten financially well-off individuals with arrest by a law enforcement agency knowing that it will instill panic and fear. When faced with the prospect of jail time, many of their targets will be desperate for an alternative outcome, and these scammers are happy to oblige.
Our world has changed over the last few years; some of it to the scammers’ advantage. The post-COVID American public – many of whom utilize video calls throughout the day in a personal or professional capacity – have been primed to engage through this channel. For the financially well-off who are already frequent victims of high-loss scams, such as pig butchering, their value and accessibility will prove to be a magnet for scammers perpetrating this type of scheme.
The crime starts with presenting victims with manufactured evidence of a crime – such as unpaid fines – for which they are threatened with jail time followed by the eventual offer of clemency, but for a price. Conducted almost entirely by video, and often using deep fakes of legitimate law enforcement agents and members of the judiciary, victims spend several arduous hours being interrogated and are even put through fake court proceedings. It is not until they have paid whatever court fees that were negotiated as part of an inevitable plea deal or agreed-upon penalty, do they realize that they have been conned.
This makes the decision to exercise the right to a lawyer not only a prudent decision for navigating a potential criminal case but to avoid becoming a victim of a crime. For these consumers, any attempts to convince them to do otherwise is a clear indication of an attempted scam. Of course, the easiest way to avoid being victimized is to keep a cool head and not respond to the threat in the first place.
Bankers Will Cozy up to the EFTA to Avoid a Patchwork of Scam Liability Laws
The one thing bankers hate more than new federal laws and regulations are those passed by individual states. It is that sentiment that will motivate a shift in how liability is handled for scams, as bankers go from detractors to supporters of a change in how authorized transactions – typical of scam payments – are reimbursed.
Starting in 2024, states like Pennsylvania will begin to pass laws that shift the liability for some scam-related losses from consumers to their financial institutions. Followed soon thereafter in progressive states like Massachusetts, New York, and California, these laws will represent the beginning of a massive threat for banks and credit unions that have historically resisted reimbursing victims of scams. Because not only will these institutions now have to incur these losses for the first time, but they will also need to navigate a potential patchwork of different laws that dictate the circumstances under which a reimbursement would take place.
The one-two financial punch of scam losses and compliance costs will shift the bank lobbying effort from that of resistance to vehement supporter of a superseding federal law. With one already on the books only in need of amending – the Electronic Funds Transfer Act – authorized transactions will be reclassified as reimbursable in the event of a scam involving financial institution payments. This will render state laws obsolete, or at a minimum conflicting, shielding bankers from compliance – the same ones who had ironically backed a change in scam-liability legislation they spent years resisting.
Anti-Scam Data Sharing Efforts Will Force Scammers to Evolve
In countries around the world, legislators and regulators are pushing organizations with a newly vested interest in scam prevention to share data with their peers. It is this effort that will enable a new level of detection by banks, social media companies, and telecoms, but at the same time, it will mark the beginning of a new arms race between scammers and those tasked with stopping them.
Following mandates by the PSR in the UK and the Scam Prevention Framework in Australia, US organizations have begun to take the initiative. This has been evidenced by the newly announced Aspen Institute working group, the recent guidance on scam data sharing from the Federal Reserve, and Google’s data sharing partnership with GASA. Such initiatives will create avenues for organizations to detect scam-related activities more quickly and efficiently across their consumer infrastructure – whether that be in communications or during payment. That includes blocking or even seizing crypto wallets on certain exchanges, the removal of scam-related accounts, and intercepting payments made on traditional rails before they can reach their destination.
Much as data sharing for fraud drove criminals to evolve their tactics, the impact of these exchanges will motivate scammers to act. That will include moving to offshore exchanges and communication platforms based in locations less inclined to cooperate with Western law enforcement efforts, dedicating more efforts towards high-volume, bot-driven account opening frauds, and taking other steps that either blunt or allow them to outpace the consequences of these data exchanges.
Scams will decline and the bar will have risen for aspiring scammers, but it will not be the end for scams. Just the beginning of a new phase of the scam epidemic.
Malicious AI Will Help Some Victims Before Scamming Others
Most consumers are wholly unaware that the person on the other end of an attempted scam exchange is often a human trafficking victim. And the criminal groups that employ them are under growing pressure from foreign governments to cease their activities, but they won’t simply close shop. Instead, to avoid being disrupted, they will replace their human ‘employees’ with malicious AI programs.
Victims around the world have transnational criminal groups to thank for the proliferation of scams. These criminals – often based in places that turn a blind eye to these sorts of crimes, for a price – cracked the code on operating an efficient business. Every business must contend with costs, so by soliciting and subsequently enslaving desperate people with offers of paid work, they have ensured that they have all of the ‘manpower’ needed while also maximizing their profits.
Yet countries whose citizens have lost billions have begun to push back on nations that harbor these groups. That includes two of the biggest countries in the world: China and the United States. This is evidenced by the passage of a new law in the Philippines that makes it much harder for scams to operate behind online gambling businesses, many of which traditionally catered to Chinese citizens. Similarly, hundreds of scam call centers operating in special economic zones in Laos are now being targeted for shutdown by the government.
As pressure on countries like Laos and Cambodia continues to grow, these criminal groups will act to reduce their footprint and improve their ability to reestablish their operations on a moment’s notice. This will make applying modern AI tools, such as generative AI and deepfakes, a natural evolution in their business operations. So, in an ironic twist, AI will have not enslaved humanity, but rather freed it – only to be used to further one of the most human of sins, greed.
Third Party App Stores Will Give Rise to a Scam App Explosion
As some of the largest and most powerful companies in the world, Apple and Google enjoy veritable monopolies on the digital app store ecosystem for their respective platforms. With US courts demonstrating that they feel much the same way, these companies will be forced to allow greater competition. This will take the form of allowing third-party app stores unimpeded access to iOS and Android devices, as well as to support the efforts of these stores to offer comparable libraries of applications. And much as these companies have warned, this will lead to a dramatic increase in the number of apps that exist for the sole purpose of scamming victims.
These technology powerhouses have argued that it is only through their efforts that smart devices have remained largely free from the types of malicious applications that have plagued the Windows ecosystem for decades. Armed with teams of app reviewers and systems for detecting malicious code, these companies have in fact kept their app stores relatively safe. By comparison, third-party app stores – which are common in Asia – are notorious havens for so-called ‘rogue apps’, or apps that contain malware or otherwise enable a criminal to conduct malicious activity. These apps are often knock-offs of legitimate apps, such as those for banking or shopping.
But there are other malicious apps that were built for a specific purpose – some of which have even ended up on legitimate app stores – and that purpose is the furtherance of scams. These apps are typically positioned as avenues to crypto exchanges or foreign exchange platforms, but are in fact closed systems entirely controlled by criminals that exist for the sole purpose of enabling scams. With a newly enthusiastic audience of device users who are gaining access to, or simply exploring, a third-party app store for the first time, these apps will find a whole new world of victims who are no longer out of reach.
Adapting to New Threats: What the Future of Scams Means for You
As we look toward 2025, it’s clear that scams will not only persist but become more complex, driven by advancements in technology and shifting societal factors. Whether it’s the rise of AI in scams, the spread of malicious apps, or the changing legal landscape that will reshape financial scam liability, criminals will find new ways to exploit vulnerabilities. Staying informed about these evolving tactics is essential, not just for individuals, but for the institutions tasked with protecting them. The fight against scams is far from over, but understanding the trends shaping this landscape is the first step in staying ahead.
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