The FTC’s message is clear: online fraud is growing, fast In its 25 March 2026 testimony, The Rising Scam Economy: Modernizing Federal Approaches to Protect Americans from Foreign Fraudsters, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission delivered a blunt warning to Congress: the scam economy is expanding. In 2025 alone, U.S. consumers submitted
Asset recovery in Europe remains deeply dysfunctional. From a victim perspective, the system still too often fails at the most basic level: returning frozen money within a reasonable time. At EFRI, we have seen this repeatedly. In the P2P GmbH case, prosecuted in Cologne, approximately €1.8 million was frozen in
Newly obtained chat records raise a central question for Europe: when does payment infrastructure cease to be neutral and become part of the machinery that keeps fraud alive? Persistence matters German prosecutors have proved exceptionally skilled at keeping victims away from the underlying court files: ongoing investigations, ongoing proceedings, documents
The UK’s new Fraud Strategy 2026–2029 is an important and overdue step – but on its current design it is unlikely to stop global scam networks on its own. From EFRI’s perspective, the core missing piece is a hard, enforceable “primary gatekeeper” regime for payment service providers and major online
Crypto coverage is already treating the Uniswap dismissal as another big win for the sector. That reaction is understandable, but it overreads the judgment. On 2 March 2026, Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed the Second Amended Complaint with prejudice in the class action Risley v. Universal Navigation Inc. Yet the
On 5 March 2026, Advocate General Athanasios Rantos delivered his Opinion in Case C-70/25, Tukowiecka, a case that could become highly important for victims of online banking fraud across the European Union. According to the Court of Justice press release, the Advocate General’s position is clear: a bank cannot refuse
As the EU evaluates its “Fighting Online Fraud – Action Plan,“ a new emerging operating model is taking center stage: FRAML (the integration of Fraud and Anti-Money Laundering systems) to fight fraud real-time and more efficiently. At EFRI, we view FRAML as a double-edged sword. While it is a significant
The Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bamberg has indicted Yehezkely Isaac, who was part of the management structure of Gal Barak’s call-centre operation between December 2016 and February 2019. Barak’s investment fraud schemes are alleged to have defrauded tens of thousands of European victims of approximately €200 million between September 2015
Disclaimer: We have just started to dig into this topic, so this article is for public‑interest information and advocacy discussion. It summarises complex issues and may become outdated as cases and enforcement evolve. Why this matters: scam ads are not “just content” When a scam appears in a social feed
The European Union is expanding its regulatory arsenal against online fraud, tightening rules for payment providers through the new Payment Services Regulation (PSR) and Payment Services Directive (PSD3), and demanding greater accountability from online platforms under the Digital Services Act (DSA). Yet Europe is fighting this battle in the dark:
