Payment and financial scams were analyzed in a recent report by Visa. According to the report, the number of individual scam reports from June to December 2023 decreased and the total money lost increased, indicating scammers are targeting victims with more effective and costly scams.

Top consumer scams highlighted in the report include:

“Pig butchering” scams: Capitalizing on holidays like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve through social media and dating sites, scammers lure victims into online relationships and convince them to invest in fake cryptocurrency trading platforms. Leveraging AI to create more convincing campaigns, pig butchering scams have led to billions of dollars of losses for consumers. According to the study, 10% of surveyed adults have been targeted in a pig butchering scam.

Inheritance scams: Victims are notified about an inheritance left by a long-lost relative, often coming from a seemingly legitimate law firm or other professional entity. Red flags include secrecy, urgency, requests for personal information, and the need for an initial payment to secure future gains. Fifteen percent of U.S. adults surveyed have been targeted in inheritance scams.

Humanitarian relief scams: Capitalizing on tragic current events, these scams exploit calls for donations across social media to defraud unsuspecting donors.

Triangulation fraud: Threat actors create illegitimate online storefronts offering in-demand products at a low cost to collect payment information. Legitimate merchants fulfill the online order, but payment information is already compromised. Triangulation scams cost merchants up to $1 billion in a single month.

Organizational fraud trends impacting the ecosystem include:

• Supply chains and third-party services are increasingly targeted with campaigns designed to maximize the impact of a single breach.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been increasingly adopted by fraudsters, allowing them to identify vulnerabilities within fraud controls implemented by banks.
• Purchase Return Authorization (PRA) fraud attacks increased 83% over the previous five-month period, with each successful attack leading to approximately $115,000 in potential fraud losses to banks.
• Ransomware cases increased 300% from June to December 2023 when compared to the same period in 2022. Visa forecasts that ransomware threat actors will continue to target critical infrastructure, including financial organizations.
• Through the close integration of people and technologies, Visa has developed processes to mitigate and prevent payments ecosystem attacks. Visa engages with all payment ecosystem participants to ensure any at-risk data is identified and impacted stakeholders are notified.

Read the full report here.