Sumsub's Annual Report: Fraud Shifts to Complex Multi-Step Schemes in 2025, Agentic AI Scams Poised to Surge in 2026

With overall global identity fraud rate stabilizing, high-quality attacks increased by 180% over 2024-2025

LONDON, Nov. 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Sumsub, a global leader in verification and fraud prevention, today released its Identity Fraud Report 2025-2026, analyzing millions of verification checks and 4,000,000+ fraud attempts between 2024-2025*. The study blends global and regional dynamics from internal data with findings from Sumsub's Fraud Exposure Survey 2025, featuring responses from 300+ risk professionals and 1,200+ end users.

In 2024, the rise of fraud-as-a-service platforms and ready-made toolkits "democratized" identity crime, making it widely accessible to non-tech-savvy fraudsters. In 2025, that trend matured into the Sophistication Shift: fewer but more professionalized operations designed for higher-impact damage.

"The Sophistication Shift marks a turning point, as businesses now face challenges tied to their velocity: the speed at which they can detect threats and adapt," said Andrew Sever, Co-founder and CEO of Sumsub.

Key findings

As Sophistication Shift shows, while fraud rates in Europe and North America may drop, their complexity and impact continue to grow.

AI: offense and defense, now with agents

A newer risk is the emergence of AI fraud agents, autonomous, self-learning systems capable of executing entire fraud operations with minimal human intervention. In some cases, a single agent can orchestrate a comprehensive attack chain, mixing fake-ID document generation, deepfake video submission, and human-like interaction at high speed. Protection mechanisms must evolve faster to block such attempts.

Fraud production is also becoming industrialized—mixing automation, cross-channel manipulation, and orchestration. With roughly one in 50 forged documents now AI-generated, visual checks are among the most exposed layers. As Big Tech innovations such as Google Veo 3.1 and OpenAI's Sora 2 push the limits of hyper-realistic content, even protective measures like watermarks are proving increasingly easy for professional scammers to bypass.

Attackers are shifting from content to context—targeting the telemetry layer of verification: SDKs, APIs, data pipelines, and device/environment signals—to mask origins and behavior.

"AI reshapes both offense and defense," said Pavel Goldman-Kalaydin, Head of AI/ML at Sumsub. "Attackers gain deepfakes, synthetic IDs, and autonomous fraud agents; defenders gain behavior modeling, millisecond anomaly detection, and self-learning systems. The next frontier is verifying AI agents themselves—confirming not just who you are, but who acts on your behalf."

2026-Ready Fraud Prevention Strategy

As Sumsub experts reveal, effective measures for the future would be manifested as follows:

The new study offers a comprehensive view of what businesses, regulators, platforms, and service providers must prepare for as we move into 2026 and beyond. To explore Sumsub Identity Fraud Report 2025-2026 in full detail, please get your free copy at https://sumsub.com/fraud-report-2025/.

* Note on Sumsub's research methodology

Sumsub Identity Fraud Report 2025-2026 compares internal identity verification and user activity data from 2024 and 2025, with added 2023 data to observe trends. All insights included are for countries with significant user activity on Sumsub's platform. The data has been aggregated and anonymized, with 4,000,000+ fraud attempts analyzed. All graphs and infographics are based on the data of consenting customers.

Sumsub conducted a Fraud Exposure Survey in August 2025. The survey included 1,200+ end-users from Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and 300+ fraud and risk professionals from companies of diverse sectors, including banking, crypto, payments, e-commerce, trading, and iGaming.

About Sumsub

Sumsub is a leading full-cycle verification platform that enables fraud-free, scalable compliance. Recognized as a Leader by Gartner, Liminal, and KuppingerCole, Sumsub combines seamless integration with advanced fraud prevention to deliver industry-leading performance.

SOURCE Sumsub