Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of trends in online-enabled fraud, including investment fraud involving deepfake content, since 2020.

Fraud and cybercrime are deeply interconnected. The Office of National Statistics estimates that in year ending March 2024, nearly half of all frauds were online-enabled.

The government’s Fraud Strategy (2026-2029) sets out the latest trends and evolving drivers of online fraud. Criminals routinely hijack online channels to socially engineer people into sending money directly, through fraudulent adverts or through convincing fraudulent emails and text messages. Criminals exploit data breaches, and use phishing techniques, to obtain personal information to takeover online accounts directly. We have also seen the growth of ‘fraud-as-a-service’ marketplaces, which lower the barrier to entry for new criminals.

The government is aware that criminals have adopted generative AI as a tool to increase the scale and sophistication of attacks, as well to bypass company’s security procedures to impersonate customers for account takeovers. Measuring these types of attacks is a challenge as often victims will be unaware of whether AI has been used. While reports of AI enabled fraud are increasing, they still account for a fraction of all Report Fraud cases (0.2% in 2025); but it is almost certain that the true number of AI enabled frauds is much higher.

We encourage anyone to report instances of online fraud to Report Fraud, the UK’s dedicated fraud reporting service, and visit the Stop! Think Fraud website for information on how they can stay safe from fraud.