Artificial intelligence, combined with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, is fueling scams on social media and dating apps, according to Europol officials.
Top financial crime experts told the Guardian that artificial intelligence allows criminals to attack thousands of victims at once.
The head of Europol's economic crime team in The Hague, Sebastian Blay, says that there is a growing trend of people saying "I'm a doctor in a war zone" and asking for funds to be transferred out of that zone.
"They also say they have to get the family out of there," Blay said.
Burkhard Mill, head of the economic and financial crime unit at Europol, adds that a single case can involve tens of thousands of euros.
They also warn of an increase in fraud with the so-called "fake bosses", where fraudsters spin an elaborate web of fake websites, bogus CVs and investor profiles to target a range of victims, from individual investors to tax authorities, transmissions H1.
The consequences can be catastrophic, resulting in people losing their life savings and in some cases committing suicide.
Europol, whose task is to prevent and fight against international and organized crime, analyzes the trend in fraud.
Mill states that artificial intelligence is making it easier for fraudsters to increase their success rate, and there is an increase in "abuses when using, for example, tools like ChatGPT."
"With big language tools, you can write thousands of relevant messages in different languages, with different targets, stories, and you can do it from your laptop from anywhere," he added.
The rise in dating app scams comes less than two years after the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler drew global attention to a man posing as the son of a wealthy diamond merchant who sexually assaulted several women, one of whom lost nearly €250.000 in loans.
No matter how convincing their story, "never send money to someone you haven't met in person," Mill says.
Blay and Mill warned of the disastrous consequences, and in some cases "revitalisation", when bogus financial advisers offered to help them get their money back.
"People sometimes lose their life savings, investing in all kinds of products. "We don't have very precise statistics, but we have heard from our investigators about cases that are quite dramatic - people throwing themselves out of windows because they lost their retirement savings in investment schemes," says Mil.
The best solution is to report the case to the police, Blay and Mill advise, but they believe that this does not really happen because people are ashamed.
"These victims suffer not only financial, but also psychological damage," says Mill.
Since the launch of ChetGPT, according to British authorities, SMS fraud has increased by 40 percent in that country.
Artificial intelligence is bringing a previously unseen economy of scale to the world of fraud, according to Blay. He adds that traditional fraud takes a long time to be implemented and lures victims into gaining trust. Artificial intelligence can change that, enabling the "phishing" of a large number of victims at the same time.
"If you meet someone in person, you have to invest a lot of time to deceive them, and also to find the right victim. With the internet, it's much easier to target a lot of people at once when you get feedback from someone on the platform, which is something you continue to engage with. If you see that nothing will come of it, just move on to the next one. It's much easier to approach people," says Blay.
Europe targeted by criminals who are outside the EU?
Europol says it believes Europe is being targeted by criminals operating outside the EU because of the high standard of living and because people have money to invest.
Authorities in India last year busted a bitcoin racket operating out of a call center in Delhi, targeting Austrians.
The scammers posed as Interpol investigators and called Austrians to tell them they were the subject of a police investigation, but if they went to a bitcoin machine to exchange cash, the investigation would be suspended.
In a recent case of "fake bosses", criminals managed to steal 50 million euros from various companies and "big corporations that you would never consider victims," Mill said.
The criminals were "very smart", they learned about the structure of the companies, created fake websites and somehow managed to get in touch with the investors, offering them a "discount" on the shares.
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