US Treasury wants banks to be better at filing cyber scam reports after noting nearly $13 billion in losses since 2023
However the number counts flagged bank filings, not stolen money, and only 1,300 institutions bothered filing at all.
The US Treasury's FinCEN arm has issued a new directive to financial institutions, urging them to improve their reporting of cyber scams. According to a recent alert, the agency has identified nearly $13 billion in losses since 2023, attributed to suspected digital asset investment scams targeting Americans. FinCEN flagged a total of 33,904 Bank Secrecy Act filings, with only 1,300 institutions submitting reports.
The majority of these reports (29.7%) centered on scams exploiting the elderly. FinCEN's new requirement involves using a specific keyword, FIN-2026-SCAMCENTERS, and providing additional information such as chat logs, scammer contact details, wallet addresses, and transaction hashes. This initiative aims to combat a growing intelligence problem, as scammers often route victims through multiple institutions, making it difficult to trace the full lifecycle of a scam.
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