Scams top U.S. digital banking fraud; losses soar

By Puja Sharma

U.S. financial institutions report 168% spike in detected money laundering accounts

Scams remain the most common and most costly fraud type.

A  report from BioCatch, which prevents financial crime by recognising patterns in human behaviour, shows financial institutions in the United States saw confirmed money laundering cases more than double in the first half of 2025 from the same period the year before. Scammers — increasingly employed or enslaved by organised crime organisations — utilise networks of these mule accounts to clean the illicit proceeds of their scams. BioCatch’s research pulls data from more than 200 financial institutions in the U.S., serving more than 245 million retail banking customers.

“While our American customers reported more or less flat scam volumes between 2024 and 2025, that still represents a quadrupling of scams in the country from two years ago,” BioCatch Director of Global Fraud Intelligence Tom Peacock said. “Scams remain far-and-away the most prevalent and most costly fraud type in the U.S. The bulk of those losses comes from investment scams, which the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Centre found cost Americans more than $6.5 billion last year. That number is sure to rise in 2025.”

While investment scams account for both the greatest average loss per victim and the highest total losses of any scam type in the U.S., impersonation scams (in which criminals pose as trusted individuals or representatives of legitimate organisations to trick victims into sharing personal or financial information) and purchase scams (where criminals offer fake goods or services to steal payment) remain the two most common scam types.

“I have long feared that the trifecta of fraud displacement from abroad, the rise and weaponisation of advanced AI tools, and the complexity of the U.S. financial environment would combine to fuel an ever-expanding wave of successful scams against the American public,” said Risk Insight Solutions’ Donna Turner, former COO of the industry consortium behind the Zelle payments network and PaymentSource’s Most Influential Woman in Payments. “Sadly, that reality is here. More must be done to combat this growing threat to our communities, our financial health, and our national security.”

The report, 2025 Digital Banking Fraud Trends in the United States, also points to blockchain-based stablecoins as the scammer’s currency of choice.

“Stablecoins and authorised push payments (APP) are now the twin engines of real-time money movement in the fraud and money laundering space,” BioCatch Director of Global Advisory for North America Rob Autrey said. “Stablecoins themselves aren’t nefarious, but they frequently serve as the preferred getaway vehicle for scammers, allowing them to realise the proceeds of their crimes.”

The report highlights differences in how the largest American banks and mid-sized credit unions experience fraud and scams. Credit unions, for example, observed a 55% increase in the amount of fraud utilising a remote access Trojan (RAT) in 2025, making RAT-enabled fraud 15% of all credit union fraud.

“Fraud will always find the path of least resistance,” Nasdaq Verafin Head of Fraud Product Strategy Colin Parsons said, “and with the rise of AI, fraudsters are able to leverage technology that introduces scams at a speed and scale never seen before. AI also helps scammers easily tailor and customise their efforts to defraud consumers, mimicking the level of outreach and service members have come to expect from their credit unions.”

Key findings:

• AO down, ATO up: BioCatch’s U.S.-based customers recorded an 18% reduction in account opening fraud (AO) attempts in the first half of 2025. Meanwhile, total attempted account takeover (ATO) cases rose by 13%, and attempted ATO cases in which the fraudster utilised a RAT increased by 50%.
• Stolen device fraud growing: Financial institutions in the U.S. have observed a spike in fraud executed from stolen devices.
• Malware may be coming: Malware has long plagued other nations around the world but has mostly spared the United States. That may be changing.
• Card fraud rampant in mid-market: Nearly 20% of fraud reported by credit unions now relates to card activity.