Fraud no longer sits at the margins of economic crime. It crosses borders, exploits gaps between jurisdictions, and scales at a pace that traditional tools and processes cannot match. It is no longer just a personal issue harming individual victims — many governments now see it as a national-security concern, while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international bodies treat it as a macro-financial risk: outpacing economic growth, undermining financial-integrity frameworks, and increasingly featuring alongside drug trafficking as a top predicate crime in national risk assessments.
At the Global Fraud Summit 2026 in Vienna, co-hosted by UNODC and INTERPOL, that reality was made clear — and so was the intent from governments, law enforcement, and the industry to build a very different kind of response. Chainalysis was proud to sponsor the Summit and to endorse our support for its outcomes.
The Summit moved from diagnosis to delivery through two voluntary but substantive outcomes: a Call to Action on Combating Fraud and a Global Public-Private Partnership Framework against Fraud. Together, they set expectations for stronger data-sharing, asset recovery, victim protection, and operational cooperation across borders, and have already attracted a broad coalition of endorsers from governments on every continent and a wide range of private-sector partners.
A new threat picture: Industrialized, AI-enabled fraud
On the mainstage, INTERPOL launched its Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment, warning that fraud is now one of the world’s most severe and fast‑evolving transnational crimes and a core pillar of a wider “polycriminal” ecosystem spanning organized crime, human trafficking, and cybercrime.
The assessment highlights three dynamics. INTERPOL fraud‑related notices and diffusions rose 54% between 2024 and 2025, underscoring both surging fraud and an intensifying international response. Scam centres have spread across all regions, using low‑cost digital infrastructure, “fraud‑as‑a‑service” tools, and synthetic media to reach victims globally at scale. AI is now central to this model: drawing on Chainalysis research, INTERPOL finds AI‑enabled crypto scams are 4.5 times more profitable than traditional scams, extracting on average $3.2 million per operation versus $719,000 for non‑AI scams and generating far higher daily volumes and transaction counts as scammers use AI to contact, manipulate, and manage many more victims at once.
From rhetoric to architecture: Task forces, operations, and national models
One of the most important shifts in Vienna was from ad hoc collaboration to hard architecture.
INTERPOL’s new Global Fraud Task Force, launched at the Summit, will sit above national and regional efforts to map global fraud and scam networks, identify the highest‑value targets, and coordinate cross‑border disruption campaigns. Operation Shadow Storm, funded by the UK Home Office, will focus in particular on the scam‑centre ecosystem, tracking flows through tools like INTERPOL’s Global Rapid Intervention of Payments (I-GRIP) stop‑payment mechanism and targeting the links between fraud, cybercrime, and human trafficking. INTERPOL also underscored the need to work with external partners including private-sector organisations such as blockchain analytics providers like Chainalysis and virtual asset service providers (VASPs). We strongly support this approach and share INTERPOL’s view that robust public-private partnerships are essential to mapping, disrupting and ultimately dismantling scam ecosystems at scale.
Countries used the Summit to showcase national models that others can adapt. The United Kingdom is modernizing its fraud response with a new National Fraud and Cybercrime Reporting Service, large‑scale asset recoveries such as the 61,000‑bitcoin seizure in London, and Project Winterproof to target overseas scam networks, acknowledging that roughly three‑quarters of UK fraud originates abroad.
Singapore and its Ministry of Home Affairs have built a “shared responsibility” framework under its Online Criminal Harms Act, bringing telcos, banks, and platforms into a clear rules‑based system with very high compliance rates and explicit liability for non‑compliance.
New Zealand’s Anti‑Scam Alliance and Financial Crime Prevention Network use proactive information sharing, delayed payments, and cross‑agency cooperation to slow scams before losses crystallize. Australia’s Fraud Fusion Task Force unites 24 government departments in a whole‑of‑government approach to systemic fraud, while Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police is partnering with Ghana’s EOCO on administrative freezes that stop assets in motion, an approach now being applied beyond crypto to high‑value vehicle theft.
Japan, alongside Canada and others, was highlighted by UK ministers as a key partner in new anti‑fraud alliances focused on data sharing, public awareness, and asset recovery.
Alongside these national efforts, the private sector is also moving toward a whole‑of‑system response. Ahead of the Summit, eleven major technology and retail companies, including Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and OpenAI, signed an Industry Accord Against Online Scams & Fraud committing to share threat intelligence, deploy new AI‑driven defenses, and coordinate more closely with governments and law enforcement on transnational scam networks. One of the stipulations is a pledge to require stronger verification for financial transactions on their platforms, ensuring both parties are legitimate before value moves, an area where on‑chain analytics and robust counterparty risk assessment are critical.
UNODC Acting Executive Director John Brandolino captured the scale of the shift, “Today, we are facing a very different kind of fraud; one that is sophisticated, organized, and perpetrated across borders with breathtaking speed. We are seeing a global criminal ecosystem that requires different skillsets and expertise to address — from tech companies, banks, private sector stakeholders and governments — all of them with a role to play. This Summit provides a unique setting to bring different perspectives and this range of expertise together, and to begin shaping a more coordinated global response.”
Data, partnerships, and making technology work for defenders
Across two key sessions, Jim Lee, Chainalysis Global Head of Capacity Building, brought a law‑enforcement practitioner’s lens to how data and partnerships can close the gap between criminals and defenders.
In the Chainalysis side event on cryptocurrency‑related fraud, held in collaboration with the UK’s National Crime Agency and Ghana’s Economic and Organized Crime Office, Jim set out how financial crime has not changed in its core motive (profit) but has been transformed by speed, pseudonymity, and the global reach of digital assets. He showed how crypto now appears in almost every profit‑driven crime category, from scams and ransomware to human trafficking and terrorist financing, and how blockchain data can turn that complexity into an investigative advantage rather than a disadvantage.
Matt Perfect, Fraud Threat Lead at the UK’s National Economic Crime Centre, said, “The NCA were grateful to partner with Chainalysis at our side event during the Global Fraud Summit 2026. With one of the key summit announcements being the launch of Interpol’s Global Fraud Task Force (Op Shadowstorm), we continue to emphasise the immense power of public–private partnerships in tackling fraud at scale. Collaboration between law enforcement and industry remains essential to identifying threats, sharing intelligence, and disrupting criminal networks.”
Jim Lee with Mr. Matthew Perfect, Fraud Threat Lead, National Economic Crime Centre, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Mr. Raymond Archer, Executive Director, Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO), Ghana
Jim and his panellists emphasized three themes. First, public–private partnerships are now a must‑have, not a “nice to have,” if agencies want to match the speed and sophistication of fraud networks that use AI and crypto infrastructure to move funds at scale. Second, crypto’s transparency is a law‑enforcement edge: every transaction leaves a permanent record that can be used to map networks, identify scam compounds and laundering hubs, and support large seizures and victim restitution, as seen in Ghana’s first $15.1 million crypto seizure, achieved through tight cooperation between EOCO, NCA, Europol, and private partners. Third, sustained investment in people, tools, and structures is essential: agencies need the right skills, technology, organizational models, and sufficient financial resources to build and maintain crypto investigation capabilities, especially in emerging markets.
On the mainstage “Law Enforcement and Private Sector Partnerships” panel, Jim extended these points. He described how embedding private‑sector experts directly into task forces and running joint operational “sprints” — such as Operation Spincaster, which generated over 7,000 criminal leads and helped freeze millions in USDT — can compress investigative timelines and upskill investigators in real time.
Jim Lee in his panel alongside Mr. Yat-ming Joe Chow, Commissioner, Hong Kong Police Force, Mr. Jeremy Douglas, Deputy Director Office of the Director Division for Operations, UNODC, Mr. Davide d’Auria, Head of Economic Crime Unit, European Financial and Economic Crime Centre (EFECC), Europol, and Ms. Xolisile Khanyile, Chairperson, Global Coalition to Fight Financial Crime
He also challenged agencies to move beyond siloed “crypto units” inside cyber teams and to integrate virtual asset expertise across all crime programmes, reflecting the reality that crypto now features in scams, narcotics, corruption, organized crime, and more. That same spirit lies behind INTERPOL’s Global Fraud Task Force, which aims to join up national, regional, and global views of fraud networks and to blend law‑enforcement intelligence with private‑sector datasets at scale.
Where Chainalysis goes next
For Chainalysis, the Global Fraud Summit 2026 was more than an event. It reaffirmed our role in a whole‑of‑system response to fraud, linking governments, law enforcement, platforms, and financial institutions with the on‑chain intelligence they need — through tools like Chainalysis Reactor, Data Solutions, and Alterya — to move from fragmented efforts to a coordinated, data‑driven campaign.
We congratulate the governments that have made firm commitments and established dedicated task forces to combat fraud, including INTERPOL’s Global Fraud Task Force and Operation Shadow Storm. We will continue to support public‑ and private‑sector organisations with on‑chain intelligence on scam networks, money‑laundering hubs, and high‑value targets, as well as the expertise to turn that intelligence into action in live investigations. We will also keep expanding training, embedded expert programmes, and AI‑driven prevention tools so that more agencies can detect and disrupt fraud earlier.
The Summit showed that the world is converging on the same conclusion: fraud is organized crime and a systemic financial risk, and only coordinated, data‑driven action across borders and sectors can match its speed and sophistication. Chainalysis will remain a committed partner to governments, law enforcement, and financial institutions as they turn that consensus into sustained operational impact.
Lastly, we want to congratulate UNODC and INTERPOL for organising a successful event, and we look forward to continued and expanding collaboration with these key international organisations to combat organized crime.
Read the INTERPOL Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment and our 2026 Crypto Crime Report: Scams chapter for more detail on how AI‑enabled fraud and crypto‑based scams are evolving and how data can help stop them.
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