Attacks utilizing remote-access tools surge by a factor of five
MEXICO CITY (April 6, 2026) — Just released data from 36 Latin American financial institutions serving a combined more than 300 million customers shows social engineering scams continue to plague the region, with scam attempts increasing 155% in 2025. Equally concerning, fraud attempts utilizing a remote-access tool increased fivefold, reported malware attacks rose by 225%, and fraud cases originating from stolen devices surged by 344%.
“What we’re seeing in Latin America is a predictable evolution in fraud MOs in response to the defenses banks have put in place,” BioCatch Director of Global Fraud Intelligence Tom Peacock said. “Fraudsters often rely on the most basic forms of phishing and credential theft to elude the most basic fraud defenses, but when banks start to improve customer authentication processes, criminals then shift toward real-time social engineering and remote access to victims’ devices.”
BioCatch, which prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, published these findings based off proprietary data from its customers in the region. Latin America also saw account takeover attempts almost triple between the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2026. Mexican banks saw the greatest spike in this regard, with cases increasing by more than a factor of four (324%).
While reported money mule accounts throughout Latin America increased by 42% from the year before, Argentina recorded a 27% decline in mule activity. In May of 2025, three Argentinian banks announced the launch of BioCatch Trust Argentina, the hemisphere’s first, and the world’s second-ever, real-time, inter-bank, behavior-based, fraud and financial crime intelligence-sharing network.
“The success of real-time intelligence-sharing in Argentina raises a key question: Can the financial industry fight fraud without structural collaboration?” Santander Argentina Head of Fraud Prevention Sebastian Cafaro said. “In an ecosystem where fraudsters share information in real time, competition between banks can become our greatest weakness. In fraud prevention, our rivals are not the other banks. Our rivals are the attackers.”
Download the report to view the complete results.
###
About BioCatch:
BioCatch prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, continuously collecting more than 3,000 anonymized data points — keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen behavior, AI agent usage, jailbroken devices, and more — as people interact with their digital banking platforms. With these inputs, BioCatch's AI and machine-learning models continuously assess both user intent and any signs of coercion or manipulation throughout every millisecond of every digital banking session, allowing banks to distinguish the criminal from the legitimate in real time. Insights drawn from across the entire network of BioCatch institutions further amplify the power and accuracy of that real-time risk-scoring. As of the end of Q1 2026, more than 30 of the world's largest 100 banks and 340 total financial institutions deploy BioCatch solutions, analyzing 17 billion user sessions per month and protecting more than 660 million accounts accessed from more than 1.7 billion devices around the world from fraud and financial crime.
###
PR contact:
Mac King
BioCatch director of global marketing communications
Mac.King@BioCatch.com