• The US Treasury's FinCEN arm asks financial institutions to file scam center suspicious activity reports under a new keyword
• FinCEN says that it flagged financial moves across 33,904 different filings, but actual losses might differ significantly, as the approach is prone to double-counting transactions
• Only 1,300 institutions filed reports, with 10,082 (29.7%) of them centering around exploitation of the elderly by scammers

The US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has issuespublished an alert and a companion data analysis telling banks, credit unions, digital asset exchanges, and securities firms that it needs sharper reporting on the overseas scam centers that it says target Americans at an industrial scale.

FinCEN puts total damages, per its reporting mechanism, at roughly $12.7 billion linked to suspected digital asset investment scams between September 2023 and the end of 2025.

The number comes from adding up the dollar values of 33,904 Bank Secrecy Act filings that referenced the keyword from its 2023 "pig butchering" alert, which may be overstated, as it includes both attempted and successful transactions as well as both inbound and outbound reports, often of the same transactions, causing significant overlap.

FinCEN's new requirement is a keyword

While the $12.7 billion is a measure of what institutions have flagged and is prone to double-counting and errors, victim losses, a significant chunk of which go unreported, may be considerably higher.

This has prompted Gene Lange, who effectively works as the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, to call these scams "one of the most significant fraud threats facing Americans today."

It has also prompted a new suspicious activity report keyword: "FIN-2026-SCAMCENTERS," which institutions are expected to use to indicate that a scam center is potentially involved.

FinCEN also wants chat logs, scammer phone numbers, social media handles, wallet addresses, transaction hashes, and the URLs victims were told to deposit into, filed in the structured cyber indicator fields rather than left out.

Institutions to volunteer more information to stop scams

The move is part of its push to have institutions volunteer more information under the US Patriot Act, as it aims to confront what is a growing intelligence problem: scammers tend to route victims through several institutions in sequence; most filers see only one slice of a scam's lifecycle and often have difficulty tracing it all the way.

For example, a crypto exchange might see a customer buying USDT and sending it off-platform, a bank might see a wire to that exchange, and a brokerage might see a retirement account liquidated. None of them would have the bigger picture of what essentially happened or what triggered the transaction.

Combined, with properly linked information, it makes it much easier to identify a potential scam; separately, these incidents can inflate the number of reports, which often aren't linked, and investigations can lack insight into the origin or final destination of the funds.

FinCEN's Rapid Response Program has interdicted $1.8 billion and recovered just over $1 billion for 5,790 US victims since 2015, which, against the flagged totals, is a very limited recovery at best compared with the actual funds at stake. This highlights a larger fundamental problem: institutions mostly detect these schemes after the money is gone, and reporting them correctly and thoroughly may yield limited dividends at best against an industry that has morphed, relatively unchecked, into a multi-billion-dollar juggernaut.

• 153 million US driving licences have been leaked on a Russian cybercrime platform
• Among those apaprently discovered in the stolen data is US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth
• The FBI is now investigating the leak, which has been traced to an identity verification company

A data leak of 153 million US drivers licenses is said to have been shared on a Russian cybercrime forum, with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth among those leaked prompting an FBI investigation.

Security researcher Brian Krebs identified the leak – which included his own data – as originating from a hack of an identity verification service. Louisiana-based IDScan provided ID verification for various well-known companies, including FedEx and Hertz car hire.

The data was shared on a Russian forum called Exploit, a long-established online community of cybercriminals. Following news of the leak, the identity theft service “Nexus” has apparently scrubbed its existence from the Dark Web.

Driving licenses and more

It wasn’t just US driving licenses that were found in the archive of recently-collected personal data. Krebs’ investigation found that Nexus claimed other types of data, and found a further 1.1 million driving licenses from Canada.

Other identity documentation alleged to be in the leak include 10 million identification cards, three million travel documents and international IDs, and 579,000 medical cards. The data was available to browse, notes Krebs, with Nexus providing details: “Records are available to preview before purchase with pertinent information redacted. Customer photos are displayed if available.”

The leak has a personal dimension for Krebs. Not only was his driving license in the collection, so was that of his mother. It has proved to be a useful coincidence, one that has enabled the security and privacy researcher to establish how the data was sourced by Nexus.

Both licenses were used for a car hire, which Krebs traced to Hertz. Others affected by the leak had also used the service, which has used New Orleans-based IDscan for identity verification.

The company, which claims to perform 21 million verifications a month, is yet to issue a statement on the matter. Its marketing and operations leader, Jillian Kossman, told the journalist: “At this point I’m not able to share any additional information, but the updates you have provided have been welcome, and helpful to our team’s investigation.”

Where is the data?

Krebs reports that he was alerted to the data on August 31, 2026, little over a week ago. Regular checking noted that the data was still being added to, increasing by “nearly 400,000” records prior to publishing his investigation on September 1.

Since then, however, it seems that Nexus has vanished, along with the data. But how widely was the data downloaded before that happened? While the FBI investigates, it falls on the American and Canadian public to be extra vigilant and wary of identity fraud.

• Airbnb scams have surged 30x since 2023, including a sharp rise this year
• Criminals hijack legitimate host accounts to to trick holidaymakers
• Staying safe isn't so straightforward as threats evolve

Airbnb-related scam activity has increased 30x since the first half of 2023, according to new research from Saily and NordStellar, confirming that cybercriminals continue to go after holidaymakers seeking the best deals amid rising prices.

The report ultimately concludes that attackers are now targeting the trust built by larger platforms, saving them from having to build new identities from scratch.

And to top it all off, the nature of scams is also changing, as instead of using suspicious websites to obtain victim payments or information, criminals are now targeting legitimate Airbnb host accounts which have spent years amassing positive reviews and high ratings.

Exploiting legitimate accounts and hijacking trust

While the end goal remains high volumes of vulnerable consumers, scammers have added an extra layer of victim in their pipeline. Verified Airbnb hosts are now valuable assets for criminals because they already have identity verifications, positive reviews, booking histories, years of activity and established credibility.

Once the verified account is compromised, attackers can then go on to scam higher volumes of unsuspecting victims by posting – and charging for – fake property listings.

“Travelers are getting better at spotting obvious scams,” Saily Head of Product Matas Cenys said. “Criminals know this, so they are increasingly trying to steal trust instead of building fake trust from scratch.”

Where this type of attack differs from others, though, is that the victims never leave the platform. Rather than falling victim to phishing attacks and being redirected to malicious external sites, they interact fully with supposed legitimate hosts on the Airbnb platform.

While Airbnb attacks have seen a 30x increase in around three years and a sharp rise in the last year alone, they reflect a much broader trend of attackers compromising existing trusted accounts.

The recent ramp-up in attacks could also be tied to the summer season, with holidaymakers looking to book last-minute deals in the run-up to the summer season. Urgency and pressure to keep costs low also adds to criminals’ success.

“Everything looks normal until they arrive at their destination and discover the accommodation never existed," Cenys added.

How to protect yourself from booking scams

Saily is recommending that all communication stays within the booking platform and that customers avoid payment methods suggested outside of official channels. Unusually attractive listings in high-demand destinations could also be taken with a pinch of salt, and savvy shoppers may choose to reverse image search a property to double check its authenticity.

“As travel booking becomes increasingly digital, trust becomes one of the most valuable currencies in the travel ecosystem,” Cenys warned.

As for abusing victim trust, researchers also argue that AI has aided attacks by allowing criminals to produce better fake listings more quickly.

More generally, Airbnb revealed that two in five Americans have fallen victim for an online scam, with the average loss totalling nearly $2,000. The company has introduced measures to remind its users how to avoid scams, including introducing identity verification and reminders not to leave the platform, but account takeovers can still slip under the radar.

Airbnb also holds guest payments until 24 hours after check-in to ensure that everything is as described. Anti-fraud tech also prevented around 265,000 suspicious listings from appearing on the platform in 2025, the company boasted.

The company posted a comprehensive eight-step list of how to avoid scams on its platform online, calling out pressure tactics and unusual deals.