A major independent review of fraud in the United Kingdom has warned that it has “grown exponentially in the last 20 years” and recommended that judges and magistrates be trained to handle increasing cases involving digital assets and artificial intelligence (AI).
Last week, the U.K.’s Independent Review of Disclosure and Fraud Offences published its second report, titled “Fraud in the Digital Age,” in which it warned that emerging technologies, such as AI, deepfakes, and crypto-assets, are accelerating a “fraud epidemic” and “equipping criminals to deceive at scale and to launder proceeds with unprecedented ease, frequently from overseas.”
The review, chaired by Jonathan Fisher KC, was set up in October 2023 to consider the challenges of investigating and prosecuting fraud cases in a digital age. After a report published last March on “Disclosure in the Digital Age,” the review’s most recent report explores the key barriers to the investigation and prosecution of fraud committed against businesses and individuals, particularly in the context of new technologies.
Specifically, it argued that fraud cases are no longer confined to simple acts of deception. Instead, they increasingly involve multiple layers of technical and evidential complexity, “driven by the rise of AI, cross-border fund transfers, and cryptocurrency.”
It also made a number of recommendations on how to meet this challenge, including bespoke training on emerging technology-related fraud for judges.
Challenge posed by crypto and AI
According to the report, annual losses from fraud in the U.K. are estimated at £2.3 billion ($3.11 billion), accounting for 44% of criminal activity, within which 80% is attributable to digital and internet-facilitated fraud. With an estimated 4.1 million offenses in the year to June 2025 alone, the report also predicted that fraud may soon constitute half of all crime in England and Wales.
“It is no exaggeration to describe fraud as the criminal scourge of our age,” said Fisher KC, in his foreword to the report. “Fraud is a crime against possession, which infringes autonomy by undermining the right to enjoy property. In consequence, the expectation of trust and security between people which allows a market economy to flourish is denied.”
One of the reasons cited for the alarming rise in fraud cases is the parallel rise of AI and cryptocurrencies, which the report argued has “further complicated the landscape, enabling new forms of deception and challenging traditional enforcement models.”
According to a Financial Ombudsman Service report from July 2025, over half of all investment scams in the U.K. now involve crypto-assets. This is backed up by global stats, with blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis reporting in January that a record $17 billion was estimated to have been stolen through digital asset scams and fraud in 2025.
“These decentralized assets bypass traditional banking systems and offer anonymity, making them attractive for fraud and money laundering,” read the review. “Crypto-assets, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital tokens, offer fast, cross-border value transfer without traditional financial intermediaries. They provide pseudo-anonymity and agility, making them attractive for laundering the proceeds of fraud.”
The same factors that make digital assets an appealing medium for fraudsters and money launderers also make the job of investigators more complicated, as they must engage in complex blockchain analysis to identify suspect wallets and follow the flow of transactions—a task that is further complicated by the use of obfuscation tools such as “tumblers” or “mixers,” which pool and redistribute coins across multiple addresses, rendering forensic tracing exceptionally difficult.
For Fisher KC, while there is no “silver bullet” to this crime epidemic, the recommendations made in the review aim to “refresh the weaponry in the anti-fraud armory and introduce new measures appropriate to fighting fraud in a digital age.”
One such measure involves training judges to better understand the technology and, therefore, be better able to dispense justice where needed. As suggested by Fisher, “effective criminal prosecution lies at the heart of the response to those who commit fraud.”
Judicial review
According to the report, U.K. magistrates and non-specialist Crown Court centers will increasingly face cases of a “nature and scale” they have not previously encountered, involving technology with which they are relatively unfamiliar and inexperienced.
Therefore, “in light of the volume of fraud cases, it would be valuable for the wider judiciary to have a greater awareness of how to manage cases involving AI-enabled fraud and cryptocurrency-based money laundering,” read the report.
For this reason, it is recommended that the Judicial College, the organization responsible for training judges in the U.K., review whether current and future judges are “adequately equipped, or willing to develop expertise, in managing complex economic crime.”
This may involve expanding the scope of the existing course or introducing a dedicated program focused on fraud and related offenses.
Specifically, the report recommended several measure to address the current shortcomings in the judicial process: first, reviewing how best to prepare all judges, including magistrates, for the likely increase in hearing cases relating to AI-enabled fraud and the laundering of money/assets using cryptocurrencies; and second, updating the training, or establishing a bespoke course, covering the unique challenges of managing increasingly digital-heavy, serious and complex economic crime cases, and whether this training should be a requirement for all judges who hear complex economic crime.
On this latter point, the report said: “Consideration should also be given to mandating such training for judges likely to preside over complex fraud cases.”
Updating the training of judges was just one of 47 recommendations made in the report for how best to respond to the increase in fraud in the digital age, ranging from granting law enforcement the power to issue civil fines to individuals purchasing fraud-enabling products online, an anti-fraud levy on digital and communications infrastructure providers, and campaigns to enhance public awareness, to intelligence sharing within public–private partnerships, sanctioning foreign nationals orchestrating fraud, and appointing a cross-Government fraud lead (“Fraud Czar”) to drive strategic coordination and accountability in the U.K.’s response to fraud.
“The measures put forward in this Review should shift the dial, to ensure that the time when there has been little to deter fraudsters is over,” the report concluded. “This is not only a matter of maintaining law and order; it is a duty to secure justice for the more than four million adults who fall victim to fraud each year.”
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