Scams & Fraud: Social Engineering at Scale

This report contains selected insights from Graphika’s ATLAS intelligence reporting on Scams & Fraud between March and April 2025. Graphika subscribers can access a full set of insights, as well as accompanying data and signals. Please visit the Graphika website for more information. Below is a summary of our findings:

• Online scammers continue to exploit trusted institutions and social media platforms to deceive users, with recent activity focusing on impersonating banks, aid organizations, and government agencies. These accounts leverage familiar branding, urgent messaging, and false promises to extract money or sensitive information — often targeting financially vulnerable individuals and exploiting real-world events like tax season or job insecurity.
• Scammers impersonating bank employees continue to target Chase customers who use the bank’s money transfer app, Zelle. Social media users report increasingly sophisticated tactics — including spoofed caller IDs, official-sounding terminology, and detailed scripts — to mimic internal fraud response procedures and trick victims into irreversible transfers.
• Other fraud campaigns have hijacked trusted platforms like Facebook and TikTok to pose as financial aid intermediaries, especially promoting fake grants or donations. These efforts rely on stock imagery, deceptive language, and private communications to establish false legitimacy and lure users into sharing sensitive information.
• Scammers are also exploiting economic pressures and seasonal trends, such as tax refund concerns and job insecurity, to promote fraudulent fund recovery and fake employment opportunities. These accounts often masquerade as cybersecurity professionals or corporate recruiters and redirect victims to encrypted messaging apps, such as WhatsApp or Telegram, to continue the deception beyond public scrutiny.
• These social engineering campaigns will almost certainly continue to evolve, with scammers adapting their tactics to new technologies, trusted brands, and socio-economic vulnerabilities. This trend presents ongoing risks for individuals and institutions alike—particularly as fraudsters exploit the reach and trust of social platforms to scale their operations.