Both fraud sessions and bot activity decline
NEW YORK (Oct. 21, 2026) — Between the second half of 2025 and the first half of 2026, U.S. community banks and credit unions saw a 25% increase in the number of digital banking sessions during which the user attempted to launder money. The average value of those mule transfers increased by 27%.
“More than half of mule sessions among our mid-market customers now originate from new devices,” BioCatch Director of Global Fraud Intelligence Thomas Peacock said. “Mules often switch devices to obscure their identity and past transaction history, splitting up incoming sums into a series of smaller outbound transfers to make it difficult for investigators to follow the money. On average, mid-market mules transferred just 38% of the total balance in their accounts per payment.”
While mule sessions at community banks and credit unions increased in 2026, both the number of fraud sessions (-11%) and bot activity (-15%) declined.
“We continue to see evolving fraud trends, including increased suspected mule account activity and the suspected misuse of legitimate technologies in connection with unauthorized access attempts and payment fraud activity,” St. Mary’s Bank Fraud Manager Lisa Allard said. “By leveraging advanced behavioral intelligence, we are strengthening our ability to identify hidden account relationships, detect emerging suspicious activity, and proactively mitigate fraud risks as these tactics continue to evolve.”
More than 250 financial institutions contributed to this dataset. All sampled institutions work with BioCatch, which prevents fraud and scams by recognizing patterns in user behavior. The report also includes a case study following a single U.S. credit union retail account over a 40-day period, showcasing how behavioral intelligence helped to identify that account as a money mule.
Click here to download the complete report.
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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 H1 2026, more than 370 financial institutions deploy BioCatch solutions, analyzing 19 billion user sessions per month and protecting more than 760 million users on more than 1.8 billion devices around the world from fraud and financial crime.
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PR contact:
Mac King
BioCatch director of global marketing communications
Mac.King@BioCatch.com