U.S. financial institutions report 130% spike in attempted impersonation scams

Investment scams still account for majority of U.S. scam losses

NEW YORK (Aug. 12, 2026) — Just released data from 292 financial institutions in the U.S. serving a combined more than 280 million users shows attempted impersonation scams more than doubled in the country between 2025 and 2026. While impersonation scams can take many forms, they all involve fraudsters posing as celebrities, loved ones, or, most commonly, representatives of legitimate organizations. Under the guise of that familiarity and/or authority, impersonation scammers con victims into sending them money under a range of false pretenses.

“While impersonation scams were the most commonly reported scam type to the Federal Trade Commission last year, they were not the most costly,” BioCatch Fraud Intelligence Research Analyst Gary Patterson said. “Investment scams continue to account for the majority of scam losses in the U.S., with scammers promising high returns on a range of different investment classes, often employing spoofed websites and fake broker platforms to create a false sense of urgency.”

While the FBI estimates investment fraud losses in the country exceeded $8.6 billion in 2025, BioCatch’s U.S. customers, which include three of the four largest banks by assets in the country, reported just $46 million in attempted investment fraud losses. Purchase scams ($28 million in losses) and law enforcement/legal scams ($22 million) were the second- and third-most costly scam types among the company’s U.S. customer base.

BioCatch prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior and published these findings based off proprietary data from its customers in the U.S.

Other key report findings:

• Phishing scams spike: BioCatch’s U.S.-based customers reported a 50% increase in phishing scam attempts between 2025 and 2026.
• ATO after dark: The majority (70%) of account takeover sessions reported in the U.S. took place after 5 p.m.
• Scams the dominant threat: More than four in every five fraud attempts (83.9%) in the U.S. between June 2025 and May 2026 originated from a device located in-country. This is likely due to the continued increase in social engineering scams, where scammers (located anywhere in the world) manipulate victims into legitimately authorizing scam transactions.
• RAT sessions increase: Digital banking sessions where a remote-access tool (RAT) was present increased by 45% in the U.S. in the last year. RATs grant fraudsters unauthorized access to banking applications, email services, and other sensitive account holder information.

Click here to view 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