South Korea and LatAm see rise in financial fraud

Financial fraud is seeing a global rise, including in major markets such as South Korea and Latin America.

During the first quarter of 2026, more than 7,000 accounts across nine major South Korean banks were linked to fraud, more than double the figure for the same period last year.

iM Bank recorded the largest number of fraud accounts, 1653, followed by Hana Bank with 1,511 accounts and Woori Bank with 1,404 accounts, according to data released by the South Korean Financial Supervisory Service (FSS). Other banks included in the statistics are KB Kookmin, Shinhan, NH NongHyup, KakaoBank, Kbank and Toss Bank.

Banks have been tightening their anti-fraud defenses. iM Bank, for instance, says it has introduced stricter limits on opening new accounts and enhanced identity verification, such as facial recognition, Korea Times reports.​

South Korea has experienced a rise in sophisticated financial and online fraud cases leveraging generative AI and deepfake technology.​

Government authorities unveiled several measures to fight voice phishing scams last year, including legislation requiring financial institutions to compensate victims of voice phishing and smishing even if the institutions are not found negligent.

Another measure against voice phishing involves introducing facial recognition to activate mobile phone lines. A pilot project will run through June 30th.

Fraud attempts rise across LatAm: Biocatch

Latin American banks are not faring much better than Korean banks when it comes to fraud.

According to data gathered by behavioral biometrics company BioCatch, financial institutions in the region are experiencing a rise in several types of fraud. This includes social engineering scams, which rose 155 percent and fraud attempts using a remote-access tool (RAT), which jumped a staggering 409 percent.

Other financial crimes recorded include malware attacks, which rose by 225 percent, and fraud cases originating from stolen devices, which jumped 344 percent. The data comes from 36 financial institutions in nine Latin American countries, serving a total of 300 million people.

BioCatch notes that fraud trends differ across markets. Mexico, for instance, recorded a high increase in account takeover attempts (311 percent, social engineering attacks (150 percent) and remote-access fraud cases (234 percent).

Peru struggled with a rise in malware attacks (167 percent), while Brazil saw a rise in stolen device cases (340 percent). In Colombia, account takeover attempts rose by 188 percent, while in Argentina, social engineering scam attempts rose by 183 percent.

BioCatch attributes these trends to the lack of open information exchange within the financial sector.

In May of 2025, three Argentinian banks introduced BioCatch Trust Argentina, the hemisphere’s first real-time, inter-bank, behavior-based, fraud and financial crime intelligence-sharing network. This has resulted in one of the rare positive statistics in the report – a 27 percent decline in mule accounts in Argentina.

Article Topics

banking  |  BioCatch  |  facial recognition  |  fraud prevention  |  identity verification  |  Latin America  |  South Korea