Good morning. Technology, including artificial intelligence, has made it easier than ever to defraud people out of their hard-earned cash, and the transnational nature of modern-day scam operations poses challenges for law enforcement. In focus today, is what one expert referred to as the “scampocalypse.”

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Hi, I’m Alexandra Posadzki, and I cover financial crime and cybercrime for The Globe.

The proliferation of scams amounts to a massive wealth transfer away from consumers, often to organized crime groups operating industrialized scam compounds in places such as Laos, Cambodia or the Philippines. Sometimes, the people doing the defrauding are victims themselves, having been trafficked into labour camps under the guise of legitimate work.

The full scope of what Bank of Nova Scotia’s Aaron McAllister describes as the “scampocalypse” is difficult to quantify, because most fraud goes unreported. It’s “incredibly embarrassing” to admit that you’ve been duped says Michelle Hilscher, senior manager of behavioural economics at Deloitte.

But we do have indications that scam losses are growing.

Last year, fraud victims reported $704-million in losses to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, up from $645-million the previous year. The centre estimates that only about 5 to 10 per cent of fraud is reported.

I teamed up with Erica Alini, The Globe’s personal economics reporter, and consumer affairs reporter Mariya Postelnyak to explore what’s driving the surge in fraud, and to highlight some of the more prevalent schemes. Here’s some of what we found.

Scams are becoming more convincing

Thanks to technology, scams have gotten much more sophisticated, which makes them harder to spot.

Scammers tailor their approaches to their victims, Larry Zelvin, head of security advisory at Bank of Montreal, told us.

For example, baby boomers are most likely to be targeted by fraudsters who impersonate their grandchildren, a bank employee or a potential romantic partner. Millennials, meanwhile, are more likely to get roped into a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment, while GenZ might be more susceptible to fake job or concert ticket scams.

Scammers are putting in work

Some scammers spend hours scouring the web for information about their targets, a task that has been made easier by AI. Personal data stolen from consumers via hacks can be purchased on dark web forums, which arm scammers with everything from a potential victim’s phone number to their social insurance number.

That means when a scammer calls you pretending to be your bank, they may actually know which bank you’re with. They may have even gone through the effort of spoofing the bank’s phone number on your caller ID. And they could have loads of other information about you, too, such as your home address or even some financial information, making the call seem more legitimate.

Perpetrators of romance fraud will sometimes trawl through obituaries, looking for people who have recently become widowed and who could be lonely. They’ll spend days, weeks or even months developing an emotional bond with their victim before ever asking for a dime. It’s what experts refer to as a “long con.”

In investment scams, criminals sometimes go to the effort of creating fake dashboards that show the victim’s investments growing, in a bid to convince them to plow more money into the platform.

A sign of the times

A tough economy isn’t helping. Hilscher says eroding affordability can make people more susceptible because scarcity can push someone to take risks – such as investing in an asset class such as cryptocurrency that they don’t know much about.

AI has also made it easier for scammers to create fake identities, which they can then use to take out credit cards and car loans that they have no intention of repaying.

It’s not just companies who are victims in these scenarios. Sometimes fraudsters will create fake personas around social insurance numbers that belong to real people, whose credit scores may suffer as result.

What can be done?

Scams are a vexing problem to tackle, owing in part to their borderless nature. The stolen funds are quickly moved offshore, out of the reach of local law enforcement. That makes collaborating across borders essential.

Collaborating across industries is important, too. Ottawa has announced plans for a national anti-fraud strategy, saying that it will take a cross-sector approach. Preventing fraud before it occurs requires the participation of all of the various players – from the telecoms and digital platforms that allow scammers to reach prospective victims, to banks that facilitate the transactions.