The 2026 INTERPOL Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment, launched at the Global Fraud Summit on 16 March, reports that AI-enhanced fraud is 4.5 times more profitable than non-AI methods, and that agentic AI systems now autonomously execute complete fraud campaigns from reconnaissance to ransom demand. Scam centres have spread from South-East Asia into Central and South America, North Africa and parts of Europe, with hundreds of thousands of individuals thought to be involved, many as trafficking victims.