DARK
ECONOMY
The Dark Economy
encompasses every illegal
or unreported sale of a good or service anywhere on earth.
World Bank data and researcher estimates put the value of the Dark Economy globally at
$15 trillion a year – nearly 14% of global GDP.
Story
The UN estimates 300,000 people trafficked from 66 countries work in sprawling scam camps against their will in 2026. Those modern slaves endure torture and inhumane living conditions while earning their organized crime overlords more than $63 billion a year by socially engineering victims all over the world into willingly and often irreversibly emptying their bank accounts.
Story
Humans have been impersonating other humans for illicit gain for thousands of years, but the digital age and, now/soon, the artificial intelligence one have made impersonating officials, loved ones, and celebrities more lucrative than ever before. Organized crime has taken notice, injecting capital, structure, and a mastery of human psychology into impersonation scam attacks now conducted at scale all over the world.
Story
While authorized push payment (APP) fraud — more commonly referred to as “scams” — now, deservedly, dominates the headlines as both the fastest-growing and most costly fraud type, good old-fashioned account takeover (ATO) fraud has not gone away. Those perpetrating it — gaining control of accounts through a variety of means to execute transactions themselves — have also evolved in many of the same ways scammers have.
"Access to the legitimate financial system
is a cornerstone of transnational crime.
Shell companies, offshore accounts, and digital banking services allow criminals to obscure their identities and the origin of their funds, while securely transferring billions of dollars in mere minutes."
- Matt O’Neill, former U.S. Secret Service
Special Agent in Charge of Cyber
Throughout 2026, this page will take a closer look at some crimes very familiar to the world’s fraud fighters – account opening fraud (AO), account takeover fraud (ATO), voice scams, romance scams, investor scams, and more – but likely outside of the average consumer’s realm of awareness. We’ll then explore the relationship between these cybercrimes and the rest of the Dark Economy, showcasing how money laundering accounts serve as the hub connecting AO, ATO, and a wide array of scams to the drug trafficking, illegal arms sales, terror financing, human smuggling, and laundry list of other crimes that receive front-page and top-of-newscast coverage every day.