In fact, investment scams account for just over one quarter of all authorised push payment (APP) fraud cases, where victims are duped into directly transferring money to a scammer and, in the UK at least, the victims are often young professional men who have one thing in common — they thought they were too smart to fall for a deception.
The rise and rise of AI inevitably means that CEO scams, where minions are tricked into sending money by someone posing as a boss, are sure to become more common. This is a big deal, because while this kind fraud is just 1 per cent of total current APP cases by volume, it has the highest average loss of just under £50,000.