CIFAS released their Fraudscape 2025 six month update a few weeks ago, with the headline, Fraud on the rise: record filings continue into 2025. Here’s our take on the findings and what they might mean for a contact centre fraud investigator.
Overall fraud volumes
Over 217,000 cases were filed to the National Fraud Database from January to June 2025, equating to a 1% increase year on year. This scale is reflected in the National Crime Agency (NCA) stat that fraud equates to 41% of all crime.
What makes this information helpful is the perspective it gives across sectors and its focus on fraud types and numbers of filings. We see this as valuable for Smartnumbers consortium members (users of the Smartnumbers Protect platform) – as it provides an additional cross-sector view into fraud trends that gives context to the fraud intelligence they are sharing with each other on a regular basis.
A spike in a certain kind of activity in telcos could hit the banks down the line, for example. Equally a reported dip in activity in a sector is also good intel, often pointing to a shift in tactics. The identity fraud stats for ‘communications’ (telcos) are a case in point.
Identity fraud and shifting tactics
Fraudscape indicates a 40% reduction of identity fraud cases filed for telcos and puts this down to a tactical shift, with fraudsters shifting to account takeover fraud instead. Banks beware – these fraudsters will be targeting telco customer account payment details.
The other interesting identity fraud stat will resonate with our insurance clients: the insurance sector saw the biggest overall change with a 25% increase in identity or impersonations fraud, primarily in relation to motor insurance. This chimes with our own work with insurance clients and their investigations into fraud – one client carried out an in depth analysis of motor insurance fraud cases in their contact centres and found that almost half of it related to identity fraud.
Account takeover
Cifas members reported a steep increase (40%) in account takeover cases relating to telco products and services, and filings in relation to online retail and plastic cards were also substantial. They also report that 68% of these account takeover cases are carried out online, adding that criminals leverage stolen data to hijack accounts.
These numbers will have our consortium members’ heads nodding – they confirm what these contact centre fraud investigators see every day: fraudsters targeting contact centres, particularly the IVR, to steal or validate customer data to use in online fraud. If we want to reduce those account takeover numbers – you need to put a stop to this early stage data gathering. [contact us].
Facility misuse and mules
The misuse of facility numbers are of interest where they relate to cases of money mule activity – mule cases make up 43% of facility misuse in the bank account sector. CIFAS reports a 17% decrease in this activity compared to 2024.
In the same reporting period as this Fraudscape update, Smartnumbers consortium members in the banking sector have reported significant success in using shared intelligence from the contact centre to identify, track and disrupt mule activity in the contact centre. So perhaps the 17% percent decrease in filing reflects that.
Overall, the message from Smartnumbers is to keep at it – the numbers in these reports validate what we already know. Fraud continues to grow, tactics continue to shift, and all sectors are a target.
We know contact centres can be a vulnerability when it comes to stealing customer data and we need to do all we can to prevent that. But we are also now proving that contact centres can play an important part in the solution – helping investigators spot patterns, build out detailed fraudster profiles, share intelligence and protect customer accounts.
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