The 2026 Global Fraud Summit in Vienna marked a pivotal shift in international policy, reclassifying industrialized financial fraud as a top-tier global security threat and prompting urgent new strategic responses from INTERPOL, the UK, and the United States.
“[Fraud is] one of the defining security issues of our age.” -- Lord Hanson, Minister of State at the British Home Office
The Global Fraud Summit in Vienna, hosted in mid-March 2026 by INTERPOL and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, signaled a major shift: financial fraud is no longer seen as a secondary issue. It is now treated as a core global security threat. Representatives from over 124 countries attended the first-of-its-kind summit. The 1,400 delegates included government ministers, law enforcement professionals, regulators, and private sector and civil society representatives – myself among them.
The meeting reached a clear consensus: fraud is industrialized, global, and rapidly scaling. We face a tsunami of fraud, but with prioritization of effort, we can fight the transnational criminals through improved information sharing, public-private partnerships, and international cooperation.
According to a new INTERPOL report, global losses reached an estimated $442 billion in 2025 alone, placing financial fraud among the most damaging forms of crime worldwide. This is just the beginning. Over the next three to five years, INTERPOL expects a sharp escalation in fraud, driven by artificial intelligence, low-cost digital tools, and increased global criminal collaboration. INTERPOL points to a surge in AI-enabled scams: deepfake impersonations, sextortion schemes, fake kidnappings for ransom, and increasingly sophisticated investment fraud.
Fraud is becoming the financial engine of global crime networks that comprise a vast, interconnected system of exploitation. Alarmingly, INTERPOL finds that terrorist groups use fraud schemes, especially crypto-based scams, as a source of funding.
In addition to the Global Fraud Summit and its call to action, four other announcements in March 2026 showcase how governments and the private sector are responding to the urgent threat.
On March 6, US President Trump signed an Executive Order that describes cybercrime as an attack on Americans by transnational criminal organizations. It states that “it is the policy of the United States to protect Americans from, and harden our financial and digital systems, against these threats.” The President ordered the Departments of State, Treasury, War, and Homeland Security, and the Attorney General to prepare an action plan by July 2026.
The order signals a shift in tone by the Executive branch. Fraud is no longer just a consumer protection issue; it is an attack by transnational criminals who are engaged in a financial war against the United States.
The United Kingdom is going further than the United States. Its new comprehensive national fraud strategy, announced on March 9, acknowledges that fraud now accounts for roughly 45 percent of all crime in the country. Backed by more than £250 million in funding over three years, the plan includes the new £30 million Online Crime Centre, which is designed to coordinate action across government, law enforcement, banks, telecom companies, and major technology platforms. The goal is not just to respond to fraud, but to disrupt it at scale by blocking scam messages, freezing accounts, and dismantling criminal infrastructure in real time.
Announced on March 17, INTERPOL is launching Operation Shadow Storm, a new international task force funded by the United Kingdom’s Home Office. The new task force will pool intelligence from 196 member countries to target scam compounds, particularly in Southeast Asia. Investigators will freeze bank accounts, shut down communication channels, and carry out coordinated raids to bring scam networks to justice.
Announced on March 17 the Global Fraud Summit, Industry leaders issued an "Accord Against Online Scams & Fraud,” a voluntary pact designed to improve how platforms, governments, and law enforcement agencies confront cross‑border scam networks. The accord was signed by Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, LinkedIn, OpenAI, Pinterest, Match Group, Levi Strauss & Co., and Target. It sets shared expectations for how online services counter scams and fraud by creating voluntary commitments on prevention, detection, and public awareness.
The steps noted above are meaningful, but they also highlight an uncomfortable truth: the United States is not leading this fight.
The Federal Trade Commission recently estimated that annual fraud losses are around $196 billion in the US. That’s about the annual revenues of Chevron, the fifteenth-largest company on the Fortune 500 list. The rise in US losses has been meteoric, soaring four fold since 2020, according to an FBI report.
Despite the staggering losses, the US lacks the basic capabilities being deployed in many other countries. The US Government has not yet created a national strategy on par with those emerging in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Because of a lack of funding, there is no centralized reporting system and no data fusion center. As other nations raise defenses, the US risks becoming an even bigger target.
The action plan ordered by the President in his recent Executive Order is an opportunity. With proper organization, coordination, and resource commitments, the United States can increase its national defenses.
