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 utilising 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 defences banks have put in place,” said Tom Peacock, Director of Global Fraud Intelligence, BioCatch. “Fraudsters often rely on the most basic forms of phishing and credential theft to elude the most basic fraud defences, 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 recognising patterns in human behaviour, 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 behaviour-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?” said Sebastian Cafaro, Head of Fraud Prevention, Santander Argentina. “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.”
