New Delhi | Over USD 442 billion has been siphoned off from the global economy in 2025 through financial fraud, Interpol said in its global financial fraud threat assessment for 2026, released on Monday.

The report kept the overall global risk related to financial fraud at "high".

Scamsters are leveraging agentic artificial intelligence (AI), which can "autonomously plan and execute complete fraud campaigns -- from reconnaissance to ransom demands", the Lyon-based global police cooperation body said.

The second edition of the report, released Monday, warned that AI-enhanced fraud is 4.5 times more profitable than traditional methods, as agentic AI systems are now capable of autonomously planning and executing complete fraud campaigns -- from reconnaissance to ransom demands, making them a force multiplier.

From harvesting victim credentials to generating psychologically tailored ransom notes, fraudsters have used "deepfake audio" to mimic the voices of corporate executives during real-time phone calls to authorise fraudulent wire transfers in the Asia-Pacific region, it stated.

Titled 'INTERPOL Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment', the report presents a grim anatomy of a "global fraud crisis", describing the frauds as a "polycriminal milieu" where traditional crimes like drug trafficking now cross paths with highly sophisticated, tech-enabled scams orchestrated through the Internet.

The report warned that "fraud-as-a-service" platforms and generative AI have demolished "barriers to entry", allowing even low-skill individuals to execute hyper-realistic campaigns.

The spread of cyber slavery and scam compounds, which were once prevalent in Southeast Asian countries, is being detected in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, aiding the expansion of global financial fraud syndicates, according to the assessment.

The labyrinthine compounds house hundreds of thousands of people from nearly 80 nationalities, trafficked and forced to perpetrate online scams in the name of lucrative jobs, it added.

Global law enforcement agencies are also trying to collaborate more effectively, the report noted.

"Since 2024, the number of fraud-related Interpol Notices and Diffusions has increased by 54 per cent. Over the same period, Interpol supported member countries in more than 1,500 transnational fraud cases in lost assets valued at USD 1.1 billion," it said.

The report further said the scam centres are growing in number and scale, targeting ever more victims.

"Although these operations are regularly shut down, the criminal leaders behind them remain hard to identify, using intermediaries and shell companies to hide their tracks and avoid detection," it said.

Interpol said it is closing this critical gap by launching 'Operation Shadow Storm', a new international task force funded by the United Kingdom's Home Office as part of a unified, data-driven response.

"Using Interpol's network and tools such as I-GRIP, a stop-payment mechanism, the task force will target not only the financial frauds generated by scam centres, but also the links to cybercrime and human trafficking for forced criminality," it said.