Global Online Fraud Costs Billions, Report Shows

The GACS app’s “Scam Statistics 2026 — Global Online Frauds” page reports that dollar losses due to impersonation growth, AI‑scam prevalence, and victim demographics have surged worldwide. The report notes a shift toward affinity fraud targeting specific communities based on shared cultural backgrounds for greater trust exploitation. It also highlights that impersonation scams grew about 8% faster than overall online fraud, driven largely by advances in deepfake technology allowing more convincing voice/video mimicry that bypasses traditional authentication measures such as SMS one‑time passwords (“OTP”).¹

U.S. consumers reported losing over $15 billion to fraud as of September 28, up from roughly $12.5 billion in prior years—figures drawn from FTC records that aggregate self‑reported incidents across the country ².

These findings underline why data like the Consumer Sentinel Network is crucial; experts note it aggregates self‑reported fraud incidents which are notoriously undercounted because many scams go unreported due to shame or lack of awareness.