• In mid-2026, an emerging cybercriminal group known as ExfilSquad launched a high-profile extortion campaign targeting prominent UK organisations across the public sector, education, and law enforcement, as well as other firms worldwide.
• Unlike traditional ransomware groups, ExfilSquad does not deploy encryptors or destructive malware. Instead, they operate as a pure data extortion group, stealing data and threatening to publish it on their onion-based Data Leak Site (DLS) if a ransom is not paid.
• Several prominent UK entities have confirmed breaches linked to the group:
• UK Department for Education (DfE): Approximately 600,000 records stolen from its Help Portal containing parent and staff contact details (names, emails, phone numbers, job titles), plus around 7,000 records from the Turing Portal.
• Police National Legal Database (PNLD): Stole 1.9 GB of data (around 135,000 records) containing contact information for over 100,000 serving police officers, staff, and criminal justice professionals, alongside around 21,000 "Ask the Police" public inquiry records.
• Newcastle University: Approximately 440,000 records compromised containing applicant and student contact information, personally identifiable information (PII), and admissions database records caused by a technical configuration flaw connecting to an admissions system.
• Analysis of the details left on the data leak site revealed that ExfilSquad's primary attack vector involves exploiting misconfigurations in cloud portals, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, internal case management systems, as well as Microsoft Power Pages data tables left publicly accessible without proper authentication.
• To force compliance and prove their claims are real, ExfilSquad uploaded multi-gigabyte torrent files for each victim to their TOR leak site. Resecurity noted that ExfilSquad assigns a distinct Torrent Tracker and initial Web Seed per victim.

Analyst Comment

While ExfilSquad is a new group, they appear to be already experienced at running these types of attacks, suggesting they have a history of cybercrime. Plus, ExfilSquad’s recent campaign highlights the growing trend of transitioning from file-encrypting ransomware to extortion driven entirely by cloud and SaaS misconfigurations. Organisations that have invested in defending against endpoint-based threats are often leaving critical business application interfaces exposed.

SaaS platforms continue to be primary targets of English-speaking cybercrime communities. In recent years,  customers of major SaaS providers, such as Salesloft, Salesforce, and Snowflake have all been extorted. Microsoft Power Pages portals, CRM databases, and customer support helpdesks frequently hold vast repositories of sensitive contact data and interaction histories. When internet-facing API endpoints or data table permissions are left unauthenticated or unpatched, cybercriminals can systematically scrape massive volumes of data without ever needing to drop a payload or escalate privileges internally.

ExfilSquad’s reliance on torrent distribution further amplifies reputational and operational damage. While gangs like LockBit, Clop, and Akira have previously utilised torrents, ExfilSquad’s operational twist of assigning unique Torrent Trackers and dedicated Web Seeds to individual victims ensures that leaked files distribute rapidly across P2P networks, making it extremely difficult to perform a takedown.

While ExfilSquad’s breaches have largely compromised contact directories and administrative support records, the real-world risks remain significant. Exposing work emails, names, and organisational structures for over 100,000 police officers and civil servants poses distinct social engineering, spear-phishing, and physical security concerns that impacted institutions will have to manage long after the breach occurs.

Defensive Takeaways

• Audit Microsoft Power Pages and Public SaaS Tables: Regularly review public data table permissions, web API settings, and unauthenticated browser views across Microsoft Power Pages, CRMs, and customer support portals to ensure backend data tables are not exposed to the public internet.
• Harden CRM and Case Management Integrations: Treat external-facing admissions portals, helpdesks, and case management systems as high-risk platforms. Implement strict access controls, conduct routine configuration audits, and enforce proper API token security.
• Deploy External Attack Surface Management (EASM): Utilise continuous external attack surface scanning to detect newly exposed web endpoints, misconfigured database connectors, and publicly exposed storage buckets before malicious actors locate them.
• Incorporate Pure Extortion into Incident Response Plans: Security teams must adapt incident response playbooks for data-theft-only scenarios. Organisations may seek to establish protocols for monitoring peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and managing public disclosures when stolen data is distributed via torrents.

Relevant Sources

1. https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/security/newcastle-university-data-breach-exfilsquad
2. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/who-are-exfilsquad-hackers-cyberattacks-dtzhvvzgj
3. https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/latest/2026/07/statementonpotentialunauthoriseddataaccess/
4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq6dmgrp21po
5. https://www.pnld.co.uk/article/?id=7ebf3c0e-598e-f111-8077-7ced8d3aa78f

Relevant CTI Sources

1. https://www.ransomware.live/group/ExfilSquad
2. https://www.resecurity.com/blog/article/exfilsquad-targets-new-victims-shares-data-via-torrents
3. https://socradar.io/blog/dark-web-profile-exfilsquad/
4. https://www.sans.org/blog/hunting-saas-threats-insights-for589-course-cybercriminal-campaigns

• On 7 August 2026, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) disclosed that between July 2021 and June 2023, the ACRO Criminal Records Office suffered three separate compromises involving its customer portal website (acro.police.uk).
• ACRO is a national police unit providing public services such as issuing Police Certificates, International Child Protection Certificates, and processing Subject Access Requests.
• In March 2023, ACRO was notified about an SQL injection attack that reportedly exposed 15 sets of credentials, the majority of which belonged to its employees.
• A subsequent forensic investigation uncovered long-term threat actor activity within the website's environment, spanning from 9 July 2021 to 22 June 2023.
• The website was built on the Kentico CMS and was running version 12.0.0 between September 2019 and March 2023. This version had multiple known vulnerabilities at the time of the incident, but suffered from ambiguity around who was accountable for patching led to missed hotfixes and updates.
• Between 15 and 16 February 2023, an unknown threat actor staged personal data for exfiltration, which included Police Certificate Applications, Subject Access Request (SAR) forms, and International Child Protection Certificate forms.
• Due to insufficient log retention, ACRO could not definitively determine if the data was successfully exfiltrated. A maximum of 10,920 data subjects had their data staged, but ACRO ultimately notified 84,048 data subjects on a precautionary basis in April 2023.
• Notably, on 23 February 2023, the ICO learned that ACRO's Trend Micro antivirus software detected and quarantined four attempts to install the well-known credential harvesting tool Mimikatz. However, because ACRO operated without a documented patching policy and lacked a structured process for analyzing security alerts, these warnings were never reviewed or acted upon.

What Happened

• New data published by the City of London Police in June 2026 reveals that courier fraud losses exceeded £21 million in 2025, with individuals aged over 70 being heavily targeted. The highest concentration of these offenses was recorded in London and the Home Counties.
• Cybercriminals and fraud syndicates are actively evolving their operational tactics, increasingly pivoting to messaging platforms like WhatsApp to contact their victims and remotely paying for third-party courier services to facilitate physical collections.
• UK law enforcement also highlighted a dangerous shift in 2025 toward high-value physical goods. Victims are being systematically manipulated into visiting multiple jewellers over an extended period to purchase gold and expensive jewellery, which they then hand directly to fraud couriers.

Recent operational crackdowns by UK Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs) showcase the nationwide scale of these networks:

• North West ROCU Operations (July 2026): Police executed coordinated search warrants in Huddersfield and Manchester, arresting two men (aged 21 and 25) on suspicion of Conspiracy to Defraud and Money Laundering. In this specific series, the suspects impersonated bank fraud departments, convinced a victim her card was compromised, sent a courier to collect it, and immediately exploit the physical card to make numerous fraudulent transactions.
• North East ROCU (NEROCU) Sentencing (June 2026): A complex, cross-country courier fraud operation spanning March to May 2022 concluded with a prison sentence for a primary operative. The network targeted 14 separate victims, convincing them to hand over physical bank cards and PIN numbers under the guise of an internal "investigation" by their bank's fraud department. The group scammed a total of £56,000, which was then rapidly laundered through the high street purchase of smartphones, designer clothing, and luxury jewellery.

Analyst Comment

Courier fraud is effectively a hybrid cyber-physical social engineering campaign. While the final phase relies on a physical courier arriving at a victim’s doorstep, the initial approach relies heavily on psychological manipulation and email, message, or phone call-based deception.

This type of fraud is notable as it follows a structured cybercriminal playbook that bypasses detection systems and takes advantage of the vulnerable in society. The victim is instructed to bypass normal banking security controls by withdrawing cash, disclosing sensitive credentials (like PINs), or purchasing high-value physical commodities like gold or luxury jewellery. This makes it difficult to proactively detect and prevent.

The other concerning factor is the couriers themselves. According to reports, they can be an unwitting third-party courier service that is paid to go to the victim's home to collect the assets. Online services enable cybercriminals to organise these pickups remotely, lowering their risk of being caught.

The £21 million sizeable loss metric from 2025 shows how profitable this low-tech, high manipulation vector remains. The recent shift to targeting gold and luxury jewellery is a deliberate evasion tactic against traditional anti-money laundering (AML) and banking fraud detection algorithms. While banks have grown adept at flagging unusual rapid bank transfers, they cannot easily stop an account holder from physically withdrawing funds or using a card over several days at different brick-and-mortar luxury retailers. This tactic serves as a highly liquid physical laundering pipeline for these syndicates that remains a challenge to prevent.

Defensive Takeaways

• Implement Bank Transfer and Purchase Outlier Alerts: Financial institutions can focus on further behavioural monitoring for elderly demographics, looking specifically for sudden, consecutive high-value transactions at physical luxury retail or jewellery establishments and flag patterns on unusual activity for review.
• Public Awareness on Cross-Media Scams: Security awareness campaigns must make it clear that legitimate institutions, specifically the Police and Banking Fraud teams, will never send a courier to a residential address to collect cash, PIN numbers, bank cards, or purchased items.
• Vetting of Courier Logistics: Commercial courier services are increasingly being abused as infrastructure by these threat groups. Logistics firms must implement logging and analysis systems to detect unusual residential pickups booked via suspicious accounts and forged identities.

Relevant Sources

1. https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/news/city-of-london/news/2026/june/over-70s-targeted-as-courier-fraud-exceeds-21-million-in-2025-with-london-and-home-counties-hit-hardest/
2. https://www.rocu.police.uk/news/2026/july/two-suspected-fraudsters-arrested-after-cross-border-strikes/
3. https://www.rocu.police.uk/news/2026/june/a-courier-fraud-conman-has-been-jailed/

What Happened

Nemesis Dark Web Drug Dealers Arrested

• On 14 May 2026, two Cambridgeshire drug dealers were sentenced after being arrested in July 2024 by the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit (ERSOU).
• ERSOU officers recovered Royal Mail parcel labels, order lists, Gorgonites-branded packaging, and a USB memory stick containing login credentials for multiple dark web marketplace accounts.
• The dealers reportedly used the dark web to supply heroin, cocaine, and amphetamine to hundreds of users across the UK.
• The drug deals were initially arranged via a Telegram channel under the handle Gorgonites, which was linked to at least 570 individual sales on Nemesis Market since September 2023.

AEGIS Dark Web Drug Market Seizure

• On 17 March 2026, the London Metropolitan Police’s Cyber Crime Unit announced the seizure of AEGIS Marketplace.
• In June 2025, the Met Cyber Crime Unit became aware of AEGIS Marketplace, which was a site where individual sellers could market drugs for sale to users who could make purchases using cryptocurrency.
• By March 2026, the website had 30 active sellers and was estimated to have generated 10,000 drug sales in ten months, leading to an estimated annual turnover of almost £2 million.
• Officers from the Met managed to infiltrate the site, retrieving server data that led to the identification of administrators, sellers and customers.

Online Killers Marketplace (OKM) Admins Arrested

• On 19 January 2026, two suspects were arrested in Romania as part of an ERSOU investigation into a bogus ‘harm-for-hire’ website which offered services including murder.
• The arrests were connected to a dark web scam website called Online Killers Marketplace (OKM), which purported to facilitate criminal activities including the hiring of hitmen and extortion.
• ERSOU noted that even though none of the services OKM offered were genuine, successful prosecutions have previously been pursued by police forces of individuals attempting to use it to cause harm to others.
• The investigation led to the seizure of US crypto currency worth at least $600,000, as well as cash which included almost €50,000 Euros, and around £48,000 worth of Romanian Leu.

Analyst Comment

The anonymity and connectivity of encrypted messaging apps, the Tor network, cryptocurrency, and online marketplaces makes it nearly impossible to prevent such crime. However, law enforcement can achieve strategic containment by targeting specific infrastructure for seizure and individuals for arrest. These activities support the overall strategy for national law enforcement agencies is to deter criminals from being active in their country.

Telegram is increasingly used as a front-end service for all sorts of cybercrime activities. As seen in the Nemesis investigation, the dealers operated a Telegram channel under the handle Gorgonites to coordinate and funnel buyers toward more secure transactions. It is an easy-to-use mobile application that makes access to such illicit services simple for buyers. It is more accessible than having to download the Tor browser and use a desktop or laptop browser. Many of these illicit services also would not exist without cryptocurrency. The ability to send funds via peer-to-peer networks and obfuscate transactions continues to be the main enabling factor for most cybercrime operations. 

Interestingly, the sole administrator of Nemesis Market was sanctioned in March 2025 by the US Treasury OFAC department. The admin was an Iran-based individual named Behrouz Parsarad. Prior to its takedown by law enforcement in March 2024, Nemesis had over 30,000 active users and 1,000 vendors and facilitated the sale of nearly $30 million USD worth of drugs around the world between 2021 and 2024.

Defensive Takeaways

• Blockchain Analytics: While cryptocurrency provides a layer of perceived anonymity for illicit markets it also leaves a permanent, public ledger. Law enforcement and threat intelligence firms, such as TRM Labs and Chainalysis, can leverage blockchain analytics to follow the money and deanonymise the administrators. By mapping transaction inputs and outputs, investigators can trace mixed funds, identify exchanges used to cash out into fiat currency, and map the financial infrastructure of a marketplace.
• Breach Data Pivoting: To catch these cybercriminals, threat intelligence analysts can use historical breach data repositories to pivot from a known dark web alias or leaked credential to find a real-world identity. If an administrator used the same password or a variation of a username on a compromised gaming forum ten years ago, that footprint can blow their operational security (OPSEC).
• Profile Scraping: Dark web vendors and market admins often leave massive digital footprints across forums, marketplaces, and messaging apps like Telegram. Continuous profile scraping can be achieve via automated bots to collect vendor profiles, feedback ratings, PGP keys, styles of writing (stylometry), and active hours. By aggregating this data over time, defenders can create a comprehensive profile of a target and identify them.
• Dark Web Market Sock Puppet Accounts: Law enforcement and threat intelligence analysts can deploy sock puppets accounts, which are undercover, synthetic personas, into these dark web ecosystems. These accounts are kept for long periods of time and actively posting in an attempt to build trust within the cybercrime underground. Investigators can use them to buy products, interact with admins, and gain access to private vendor portals or escrow systems to support evidence gathering for a takedown.
• Infrastructure Analysis: As dark web markets rely on servers, hosting providers, DNS, and Tor is is possible to analyse these attributes and look for configuration mistakes. This can include exposed IP addresses, trackable X509 certificates, or open port banners that reveal the true location of a hidden service. Once a server's true IP is uncovered, law enforcement can issue subpoenas to hosting providers or execute physical raids to seize the hardware and unmask administrators, vendors, and buyer databases.

Relevant Sources

1. https://www.rocu.police.uk/news/2026/may/dark-web-was-used-to-supply-heroin-and-cocaine-to-hundreds-of-users-across-uk/
2. https://web.archive.org/web/20260320135505/https://news.met.police.uk/news/met-seizes-website-making-millions-in-drug-sales-507234
3. https://www.rocu.police.uk/news/2026/january/dark-web-arrests-in-romania-linked-to-portal-which-offered-services-including-murder/

Related CTI Sources

1. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0040
2. https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/notorious-nemesis-market-zapped-video-game-loving-german-police

 What Happened

• Officers from the Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit (DCPCU), jointly run by the London Met Police and City of London Police, secured the conviction of a man who used an SMS Blaster device to send fraudulent text messages as part of an organised criminal operation in London.
• The conviction relates to an investigation that previously led to the sentencing of Ruichen Xiong in July 2025, who was apprehended while driving a vehicle in North London as the device was in operation. During that incident, officers in the vicinity received fraudulent text messages purporting to be from HMRC.
• Ruichen Xiong was a student from China who drove around London using the SMS Blaster between 22 and 27 March 2025, sending messages to tens of thousands of potential victims.
• Following Xiong’s arrest and subsequent conviction, enquiries identified another individual called Di Li who was a key organiser. Li facilitated Xiong’s involvement by arranging access to the device, assisting with obtaining a vehicle, and supporting his day-to-day living costs.
• Xiong had accrued significant gambling debts after arriving in the UK as a student. To pay off his debts, Li instructed that he could repay what he owed by driving routes in a car with the SMS Blaster.
• On 20 August 2025, officers searched Li’s home address, where digital evidence was recovered showing communications between Li and Xiong relating to the deployment of the SMS blaster. Li was arrested on 1 September 2025 and charged with offences linked to the operation.
• At the court trial, Li’s defence was that the device was intended for “advertising” purposes and described himself as a middleman acting on behalf of an individual based in China. He maintained that he had been merely attempting to help Xiong repay his debts.

Analyst Comment

An SMS Blaster acts as a portable mobile phone mast that forces nearby mobile devices to connect to it by silently downgrading it to 2G while they try to connect to 5G or LTE. By doing so, criminals can bypass safeguards designed to block malicious senders and harmful links, enabling them to deliver fraudulent messages directly to victims nearby without needing their phone numbers. The SMS Blaster allow an operator to customise all aspects of the messages, so they can make it look like it has come from a genuine organisation like HMRC, the UK tax authority.

SMS Blasters are a relatively new technology for scammers. Police in the UK only encountered them for the first time in 2025, but they have been used in other parts of the world. SMS Blaster are also a type of IMSI catcher that mirrors the capability of law enforcement tools such as a Stingray.

When used in busy metropolitan areas, they allow criminals to easily send out SMS phishing messages to hundreds of people at a time. These SMS messages typically have a malicious link that host scam websites that trick victims into entering their personal details. These details can then used by fraudsters to make payments, steal funds, or resell it to others.

This report also highlights the concerning trend of organised cybercrime gangs from China are actively hunting for individuals who are financially vulnerable (like students with gambling debts) to conduct high-risk in-person operations. 

Defensive Takeaways

• Block and Report: If you receive a suspicious text message, do not engage with it. Instead, forward it to 7726, a free reporting service, and block the number.
• Move Away from SMS: If your organisation relies on SMS for One-Time Passcodes (OTPs), this threat highlights that the SMS sender ID can be perfectly spoofed locally. Organisations should migrate to authenticator apps, hardware tokens, or application push notifications to avoid spoofing.
• Proactive Takedown Programs: Since the attack relies on hosting malicious links to harvest credentials, defenders can perform proactive domain monitoring. Detecting and taking down lookalike domains immediately minimises the impact.

Relevant Sources

1. https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/news/city-of-london/news/2026/june/man-jailed-for-role-in-sms-blaster-fraud-operation-following-city-of-london-police-investigation
2. https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/news-and-insight/press-release/police-warn-sms-scams-following-prison-sentence-criminal-who
3. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/jun/24/police-sms-scams-blaster-texts-smishing

Relevant CTI Resources

1. https://www.m3aawg.org/blog/SMSBlasterEngagementSeries

• On 3 June 2026, the City of London Police issued a warning stating Report Fraud has seen a significant increase in cases mentioning the retailer, reflecting how criminals are targeting well-known brands.
• Report Fraud, which is run by the City of London Police, warned that cybercriminals are using leaked credentials from historical data breaches to hijack Argos user accounts.
• Once on the account, the fraudsters order and then collect the goods in-person at a physical store. In some instances, the goods are paid for using payment details not connected to the victim of the compromised account.
• Notably, the goods from fraudulent orders are often claimed via Click & Collect option that Argos allows, enabling the threat actors to retrieve goods in store.
• In May, Report Fraud received 652 reports which mention Argos, a 323% increase compared to April, when 154 reports mentioning the retailer were made. Since the start of 2026, there have been 1,175 reports mentioning the retailer, with May seeing the highest number to date.
• This alert is also not the first raised about Argos. On 18 November 2025, the East Midlands Cyber Resilience Center issued a warning about Argos and Currys accounts getting compromised and unauthorised purchases being made. In some instances, particularly with Currys, the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) option was used, leaving the account holder with finance plans in their names.

Analyst Comment

For both everyday UK consumers and UK retail risk teams, these alerts provide several layered insights. Retailers have spent years optimising Click & Collect to be as frictionless as possible to compete with online shopping giants like Amazon. However, this alert shows how Click & Collect can be a security liability. As Argos allows quick collections, criminals can buy an item online and pick it up at a local store before the real account owner notices an order confirmation email.

The police alerts also note that the items may even be paid for using payment details not connected to the victim. Criminals are mixing stolen accounts with stolen credit cards. This is likely due to an established Argos account with a multi-year history buying expensive items would look pretty normal to a fraud detection engines.

The combination of an Account Takeover (ATO) and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) fraud creates a difficult scenario for retailers, credit providers, and consumers. The regulatory and reputational fallout for a retailer under the rules of the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) could be severe. If a retailer's poor account security allows fraudsters to easily spin up a finance plan in a victim's name, the FCA will view this as a systemic failure to protect consumers, resulting in massive fines.

These attacks are possible due to the practice of Argos users who are reusing the same previously leaked password across multiple accounts, plus users not having multi-factor authentication (MFA) turned on in their account settings. 

Campaigns like this can trigger a reputational hit to retailers as victims often do not suffer silently. They take to social media to share stories and the public narrative can shift to being about a retailer who is complicit in disrupting innocent people's financial lives.

Defensive Takeaways

• User Account Hygiene Best Practices: Standard practices such as rotating passwords, using complex password, using a different password per service, using a password manager, using passkeys, and turning on MFA would all help mitigate this type of threat for users.
• Credit Monitoring: If a user suspects their account has been compromised, they should consider using a credit monitoring service to help prevent unauthorised loans taken out in their name.
• Cancel and Replace Payment Cards: If a user suspects their payment card data has been stolen, then they should contact their financial institution and have it cancelled and replaced.
• Implement Click-and-Collect Controls: Retailers with click-and-click options should introduce controls such as requiring ID of the account owner or a single-use QR code or PIN via SMS/Email at the point of collection for high-value items to prevent this type of fraud.
• Detecting Credential Stuff Attacks: If the cybercriminals were using credential stuffing attacks, then retailers should be able to detect unauthorised password guessing attempts against their online portals. It is recommended to use IP context analysis and perform source IP correlation. If one IP address tagged as a proxy or VPN is observed attempting to login to dozens of accounts simultaneously, then there’s an issue.
• Leverage Stripe’s FT3 framework: If your organisation or team is tasked with combating fraud, then categorising these scammers TTPs is crucial. That’s why Stripe has developed the Fraud Tools, Tactics, and Techniques (FT3) framework. It’s designed to help security teams understand the landscape, spot gaps, develop detections, improve incident response, and foster collaboration.

Relevant Sources

1. https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/news/city-of-london/news/2026/june/report-fraud-alert-warning-for-argos-shoppers-after-323-per-cent-spike-in-fraud-reports-mentioning-the-retailer/report-fraud-alert-warning-for-online-shoppers-after-spike-in-criminals-gaining-unauthorised-access-to-retailer-accounts/
2. https://www.emcrc.co.uk/post/currys-and-argos-account-warning-issued-by-police

Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT)

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/s/NbOWRfzvgm
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/Argos/s/6uOo52UpHf
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/Argos/s/eZTgBhhNzp
4. https://x.com/donnaeenichols1/status/2060321697996161165
5. https://x.com/lottyburns/status/1983581827127259558

Relevant CTI Resources

1. https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/bots/what-is-credential-stuffing/

What Happened

• On 5 May 2026, new data revealed that British romance scam victims were defrauded of a staggering £102 million last year, representing a 29% surge in reported cases.
• The figures come from information gathered by Report Fraud (f.k.a ActionFraud), which is a City of London Police-run service that logged 10,784 romance scam reports in 2025.
• According to the data, cybercriminals are reportedly pocketing roughly £280,000 everyday by exploiting online relationships, with individual losses averaging £9,500 and in extreme cases, reaching up to £1 million per victim. 
• This wave of scam victims is part of the growing trend where scammers blend emotional manipulation with fake cryptocurrency investment schemes, heavily weaponising AI-generated profiles, and focusing on lonely victims aged 55 to 74.

Analyst Comment 

When analysing fraud statistics, it is important to remember that underreporting is very common, with many victims staying silent out of shame. Therefore, this is likely only a fraction of the real figures and the problem is likely much worse than we know. The data we do have, however, still reveals there is essentially an army of digital scammers routinely bleeding UK citizens dry, using not much more than a Midjourney AI subscription, a ChatGPT script, face-swapping services, and an entirely fictitious character with an emotional backstory.

Losing £102 million in a single year to fake internet characters is a truly wild national milestone. The fact that reports surged by nearly a third (29%) proves that in our society, emotional vulnerability is being monetised at industrial scale. We aren’t just looking at a clumsy email from a Nigerian prince anymore. This is industrial-grade social engineering. Scammers are playing the long game, spending months "love-bombing" victims before dropping the inevitable bombshell that they need a quick bank transfer to cover a “medical emergency” or an unmissable cryptocurrency investment opportunity.

In March 2026, the UK Government took some action against this threat and sanctioned Xinbi, a Chinese-language cryptocurrency marketplace accused of enabling large-scale online fraud and human exploitation. Xinbi reportedly processed more than $19.9 billion in transactions between 2021 and 2025, highlighting how much money the scam industry is generating globally.

Until we treat the underground scam economy with the same significance we treat ransomware or nation state attacks, the UK will continue to be one of the world's most lucrative money spinners for heartless cybercriminals.

Defensive Takeaways

• Enforce the "Face-to-Face" Financial Boundary: If you are advising family members (especially those in vulnerable demographics), establish an unshakeable, non-negotiable rule: if you have not looked a person in their physical eyeballs, you do not send them money, gift cards, or cryptocurrency.
• Teach Others Digital Sanity Checks: Teach your friends and family the art of basic digital literacy. Run profile images through reverse-image search tools (Google Lens or TinEye) and consciously flag the platform migration trap. Scammers desperately want to move targets off monitored apps like Tinder or Bumble and onto unmoderated WhatsApp or Telegram channels as fast as possible to avoid automated dating app ban filters.
• Learn From the Mistakes of Others: To find examples of victims falling for these scams, the UK Financial Ombudsman Service’s database of decisions can act as a useful resource. The decision details can help you understand how these scams work, how much money individuals can lose, and the rate at which UK banks offer refunds or compensation. More examples can be found in my talk on this topic here.
• Leverage Stripe’s FT3 Framework: If your organisation or team is tasked with combating fraud, then categorising these scammers TTPs is crucial. That’s why Stripe has developed the Fraud Tools, Tactics, and Techniques (FT3) framework. It’s designed to help security teams understand the landscape, spot gaps, develop detections, improve incident response, and foster collaboration.

Relevant Sources

1. https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/news/city-of-london/news/2026/may/romance-fraud-costs-uk-victims-102-million-in-a-year-as-reports-surge-by-nearly-a-third
2. https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/05/05/romance-fraudsters-fleeced-uk-victims-of-102m-in-2025/5227963
3. https://therecord.media/xinbi-crypto-marketplace-sanctioned
4. https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decisions-case-studies/ombudsman-decisions/search?Keyword=cryptocurrency+investment&Sort=date

Relevant CTI Resources

1. https://search-uk-sanctions-list.service.gov.uk/designations/GHR0190/Entity
2. https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/xinbi-designation-chinese-language-crypto-scam-infrastructure/
3. https://www.trmlabs.com/resources/intel-library/xinbi-guarantee
4. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/chairman-prince-group-indicted-operating-cambodian-forced-labor-scam-compounds-engaged
5. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/multi-billion-dollar-guarantee-marketplaces-exploit-stablecoins-scams

6. https://github.com/stripe/ft3