Egypt is Second most A country targeted by ransomware in Africa, accounting for 13 percent of all cyberattacks on the continent. As of 2025, the country loses an estimated US$4 billion (207.52 billion Egyptian pounds) to cybercrime every year, According to To INTERPOL’s 2025 Cyber Threat Assessment Report in Africa.
Such statistics might have seemed alarming before AI entered the picture. Currently, with artificial intelligence tools, Scams are fasterIt is cheaper, and almost impossible to detect. The threat has entered a new phase, and most Internet users have no idea what they are up against.
AI-powered fraud rates have risen 1,210 percent in 2025, far exceeding the 195 percent growth in traditional fraud over the same period. The days of obvious scams containing misspelled emails or suspicious wire transfer requests are over. AI has quietly erased the tags that once protected users, and the consequences have been staggering.
According to According to Deloitte Financial Services forecasts, published in May 2024, AI-related fraud losses in the US alone are expected to grow from US$12.3 billion (638.12 billion Egyptian pounds) in 2023 to US$40 billion (2 trillion Egyptian pounds) by 2027.
The global rise in cybercrime hits close to home
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center. registered More than 1 million complaints in 2025, with reported losses reaching $20.8 billion (1.078 billion pounds) in the United States, the highest ever. An increase of 26 percent As of 2024. Nearly 85 percent of this damage came from online fraud.
The problem is not limited to countries with rich economies. INTERPOL’s 2025 assessment of cyber threats in Africa Found These fraud notifications have risen by up to 3,000 percent in some African countries, and Egypt has been at the heart of this increase.
Specifically, Interpol It has been marked Egypt is one of the most targeted African countries, with social engineering, phishing via the messaging platform WhatsApp and fake investment schemes among the most prevalent tactics.
In 2024 alone, Positive Technologies, an information security company, It has been identified More than a hundred listings on the dark web offer stolen Egyptian databases for sale.
New cheating tools
Understanding the scale of the problem requires understanding the tools. While AI has not introduced new types of fraud, it has made old ones easier to perpetrate, nearly undetectable, and infinitely scalable.
Generative AI can now produce compelling video and audio recordings of public figures or copy the appearance, voice, and behaviors of almost anyone using existing video or audio footage. Financial losses resulting from deepfake fraud Transgression $200 million (10.4 billion pounds) in the first quarter of 2025 globally.
In one of the most studied fraud cases of the decade, it involved a finance employee at the global engineering firm Arup Deceived In transferring US$25.5 million (1.3 billion Egyptian pounds) after participating in a video call featuring images of senior executives generated by artificial intelligence.
Through business email compromise (BEC), criminals can use AI to impersonate executives, create fake invoices, and issue fraudulent payment instructions. BEC costs businesses the least 3 billion US dollars (155.6 billion Egyptian pounds) globally in 2025. AI voice cloning has increased these attacks by simulating voices that are almost impossible to distinguish from real ones.
It can take repeating a person’s voice Less than three seconds Audio using audio reproduction. One in ten adults globally have been exposed to an AI voice scam 77 percent Those targeted reported losing money as of September 2025. The most common scam is receiving a call from a loved one who is experiencing an emergency and requesting an urgent money transfer.
Another notorious method is romance-based investment or fraud, Scammers use artificial intelligence to build trust over weeks through fake personas, then direct victims to fraudulent investment platforms. Fake celebrity endorsement videos generated by artificial intelligence have led to investment scams Losses exceed $632 million (32.7 billion pounds) in the United States alone in 2025. In March 2026, Interpol It has been marked Fake investment schemes as one of the most common and most harmful categories of fraud worldwide.
Another type of scam is email phishing, which used to be recognizable by classic indicators, like poor grammar and generic greetings, but AI has changed that. more 82 percent A large number of phishing emails are now being generated with the help of artificial intelligence, allowing scammers to craft compelling personal messages faster. Phishing reports increased by 466 percent between the first quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, According to According to a report by Gen Threat, a cybersecurity company. In Egypt, WhatsApp phishing is among the crimes Most widespread Tactics.
AI-powered bots can also conduct thousands of fraudulent transactions simultaneously, collecting credentials and processing fake refund requests on a scale that no human process can match. Among large retailers, one study registered 330 percent increase in automated fraud in two months.
A dangerous trust gap
According to According to Sift, a fraud prevention company, seventy percent of Internet users said it became harder to identify scams in 2025 than the previous year. However, a third of respondents still said they were confident they could spot an AI-generated scam, representing a serious disconnect.
Currently, 78% of users worldwide open AI-generated phishing emails, and 21% click on malicious links. According to To another report from Sift. Meanwhile, in Africa, Interpol male 75 percent of African countries reported the need to improve legal frameworks for prosecuting cybercrimes.
While the same artificial intelligence is being used as a weapon by criminals Spread in defence From banks, cybersecurity companies, and law enforcement, AI-driven fraud continues to rise.