GenAI fueling employee impersonation with biometric spoofs and counterfeit ID fraud

A new report on the state of identity fraud has revealed the startling statistic that half of businesses in North America have reported growth in deepfake and AI-generated fraud.

The annual AuthenticID report underlines the surging wave of AI-powered identity fraud, with rising biometric spoofs and counterfeit ID fraud attempts. The 2025 State of Identity Fraud Report also looks at how identity verification tactics and technology innovations are tackling the problem.

“In 2024, we saw just how sophisticated fraud has now become: from deepfakes to sophisticated counterfeit IDs, generative AI has changed the identity fraud game,” said Blair Cohen, AuthenticID founder and president.

“It’s clear from our data and surveys that businesses may not even know the extent of the fraud they’re allowing to pass through their systems — making both vigilance and action crucial in 2025,” he continued.

AuthenticID detected 42 percent more fake IDs and suspicious biometric transactions processed through its verification system year-over-year, in 2024, whilst its annual report documents that 68 percent of businesses have encountered workforce-related fraud, with impersonation of an employee as the most common fraud type.

“In 2025, businesses should embrace the mentality to ‘think like a hacker’ to combat new cyber threats,” said Chris Borkenhagen, chief digital officer and information security officer at AuthenticID. “Staying ahead of evolving strategies such as AI deepfake-generated documents and biometrics, emerging technologies, and bad actor account takeover tactics are crucial in protecting your business, safeguarding data, and building trust with customers.”

Those interested can download the full report from AuthenticID here.

Deepfakes hitting across the globe

Brazil’s Banco Daycoval will be facing off against the growing challenge of deepfake-based identity fraud with a new partnership.

Based in the Netherlands, DuckDuckGoose has made its name in offering AI-driven deepfake detection, and its services will be employed by the Brazilian financial institution.

“Banco Daycoval’s leadership and proactive approach is demonstrating exceptional vigilance in addressing today’s most sophisticated fraud threats,” commented Parya Lotfi, CEO of DuckDuckGoose.

Banco Daycoval is integrating DuckDuckGoose’s DeepDetector solution into its Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, to detect deepfakes in real time and improve the efficiency of  verification. It comes as digital identity fraud is surging around the world.

Face biometric verification company iProov has identified the Philippines as a particular hotspot for digital identity fraud, with corresponding need for financial institutions and consumers to be vigilant.

“There is a massive increase at the moment in terms of identity fraud against systems using generative AI in particular and deepfakes,” said iProove chief technology officer Dominic Forrest.

Speaking to BusinessWorld, Forrest explained that the major increase in the use of deepfakes, to attempt to “spoof the identity of customers,” occurs both at time when the account is opened and therefore when the identity is created, and also later on when attempts are made to overtake well-established accounts “where trust in the customer is high.”

Forrest says the use of national identity cards in the Philippines, similar to Singapore, could protect against these kinds of attacks, while the Southeast Asian country’s central bank (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) has already implemented cybersecurity-related regulations.

“The Philippines is fortunate enough to have a regulator who is very forward-thinking in the terms of the rules they’re putting in place to protect the banks and the customers, or indeed, for the banks to do this in advance of the regulator,” he said.

It’s certainly a global issue as digital identity fraud trends across Africa were investigated by identity verification vendor Smile ID in a comprehensive new report.

The 2025 Digital Identity Fraud in Africa Report notes that “widespread adoption of biometric verification over traditional textual methods has significantly strengthened fraud prevention, driving the overall fraud rate during KYC checks down to 25 percent in 2024.”

However, the report observes the ongoing evolution of attack methods targeting biometric systems and emergence of newer techniques; these were tracked from anonymised data from over 110 million identity verification checks conducted by Smile ID across Central, East, West, and Southern Africa in 2024, which revealed “significant” regional variations in fraud methods.

“The future of fraud prevention lies in adaptability,” said Mark Straub, Smile ID CEO. “While AI provides fraudsters with powerful new tools, it also helps security practitioners harness global intelligence to counter zero-day attacks and automate processes that were once manual.”

Article Topics

AI fraud  |  AuthenticID  |  biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  deepfakes  |  DuckDuckGoose  |  fraud prevention  |  generative AI  |  identity verification  |  iProov  |  Smile Identity  |  synthetic identity fraud