AI cuts scam labor costs, lifting fraud revenue 4.5-fold, Chainalysis finds

September 19, 2026 at 10:10 PM2 min

This digest was compiled by AI from multiple sources — links to the originals are below.

AI is making fraud cheaper to run, letting one or two people operate scams that once required larger teams, FATF president Giles Thomson told the Financial Times. Chainalysis found average on-chain revenue of $3.2 million per scam operation with observed AI vendor links, versus $719,000 without such links. The FBI recorded 22,364 complaints with AI-related information and $893.3 million in adjusted losses in 2025.

Key Facts

Chainalysis found average on-chain revenue of $3.2 million per scam operation with observed links to AI vendors, compared with $719,000 for operations without those links.
The FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center report recorded 22,364 complaints containing AI-related information and approximately $893.3 million in adjusted losses.
FATF president Giles Thomson told the Financial Times that AI could let “one or two people in a basement with a very big server” do work that once required a much larger scam operation.

AI-Driven Fraud Scale

Chainalysis found average on-chain revenue of $3.2 million per scam operation with observed links to AI vendors, compared with $719,000 for operations without those links, or roughly 4.5 times as much revenue per operation. That does not mean buying an AI subscription automatically quadruples a criminal's income, as larger operations may simply be more likely to buy sophisticated tools, and Chainalysis cannot see every use of AI through blockchain data. The numbers show why criminals have an incentive to automate: traditional confidence fraud is labor-intensive because somebody has to maintain the illusion.

Automation of Deception

AI makes that attention cheap, allowing one operator to maintain more conversations, in more languages, for longer periods of time, while generating convincing documents, images, voices, and identities around them. Criminals do not need software to feel empathy, only software that can imitate empathy well enough to keep someone talking. The expensive part of the scam used to be maintaining the human performance, and increasingly parts of that performance can be rented from a model.

Reported Losses

The FBI's summary of its 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center report recorded 22,364 complaints containing AI-related information and approximately $893.3 million in adjusted losses. Romance scams need someone to keep a conversation going for weeks, investment fraud needs someone to answer questions and maintain a believable identity, and impersonation scams need someone to keep the act together long enough to transfer money. AI can now do more of that work, meaning the same criminal operation can reach far more people without adding more humans.