• David Janson, VP EMEA at Fivecast


• 10.10.2025 03:30 pm
#FinancialCrime #SocialMediaInsights

In the UK, a total of £1.17 billion was stolen by criminals via unauthorized and authorized fraud in 2024, with consumers falling victim to techniques such as authorized push payment (APP) fraud and social engineering. Stolen money is then being funneled through complex criminal networks via money-laundering schemes, placing significant strain on anti-money laundering (AML) operations. With numerous sophisticated forms of financial crime posing a risk to financial institutions and their customers, there is one resource that is largely being under-utilized for detection and prevention: publicly available information (PAI) including insights from online content and social media.

Turning the tide

Expanding fraud techniques, such as APP, are pushing financial institutions to evolve their strategies in the fight against fraud. This urgency is heightened by evolving due diligence requirements for AML regulatory compliance, such as the expanded guidance and definitions in the European Union’s EU AMLD6. 

Financial institutions, the police and public bodies can help turn the tide on rising fraud and money laundering by leveraging PAI, which can send clear signals of criminal activity. Financial crime risk indicators can be identified by analyzing the digital footprints, behavioral patterns and online networks of individuals, including their social media accounts. These indicators could be hidden assets, risky associations or behavioral red flags that are only likely to be revealed via social media insights.

For example, sophisticated fraud groups are likely to take extra steps to conceal their illicit activities from financial institutions, bypassing existing monitoring tools. Data points from social media, combined with news sources and other corporate registries, can surface indicators of risk such as displays of unexplained levels of wealth. This public information can also shed light on the connections between prime suspects and their networks, providing a comprehensive picture of all the individuals involved in a specific crime group.

Leaving no digital stone unturned

Social media information can provide clues to the perpetrators in fraud crimes, but so can other sources of data hidden across the online world. The explosion of online content across the surface, deep and dark web, now renders manual research techniques obsolete. AI-driven social media monitoring solutions enable investigators the opportunity to automatically gather, filter and analyze data across every corner of the internet to find risk indicators. 

The automated capabilities offered by technology enable the complete avoidance of unsustainable manual investigations. Manual methods only increase risks and create investigative bottlenecks, which are exacerbated in cases of limited analyst capacity. Automated data collection and AI-enabled analysis across masses of online data can uncover previously invisible links between organized crime, money laundering and legitimate financial transactions which are simply not discoverable through manual investigation methods in a time or cost-effective manner.

Identifying and dismantling financial crime networks

Financial crime will continue to evolve as criminals adopt new technologies and tactics to outpace traditional defenses. To stay ahead of advancing threats, minimize business risk and ensure compliance, financial institutions and regulators must be equally adaptive to social media monitoring and analysis tools as essential elements of their strategies rather than viewing them as optional.

Social media insight is invaluable in the fight against financial crime as it provides critical, publicly available data that can uncover hidden assets, risky associations and behavioral red flags not detectable by traditional financial crime investigation methods. By leveraging digital footprint analysis, the power is with financial institutions, law enforcement and public bodies to gain a more comprehensive understanding of criminal networks and their operations. 

By moving beyond conventional monitoring and fully integrating advanced social media monitoring capabilities, organizations can take a proactive approach in identifying and dismantling financial crime networks before they can inflict further damage to businesses, individuals and communities.