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48% enterprises flag mule networks as top fraud threat, ETCISO
Bureau’s India Fraud Report 2026 points to a major shift in how fraud is being executed across India’s digital economy. With fraud losses in the banking sector rising to ₹36,014 crore, the report says fraud operations are becoming faster, more organized and increasingly industrialized, using real-time payments, instant onboarding and interconnected digital platforms to scale attacks.
One of the report’s key findings is the growing role of mule networks. Around 48% of Indian enterprises identified mule networks as the most difficult fraud threat to detect and control, ahead of phishing, synthetic identities, account takeover and social engineering. These networks are designed to appear legitimate while distributing funds across clusters of connected accounts, making them difficult to identify without cross-platform visibility.
The report also highlights rising pressure on risk teams. About 58% of organizations identified false positives as their main risk, suggesting that teams are spending significant time investigating legitimate users while more sophisticated threats go undetected.
Identity emerged as a major entry point for fraud in 2025, with fragmented and reusable identity data being misused at scale. This has made it harder for organizations to distinguish genuine users from fraudsters. The challenge is being intensified by AI tools that can generate realistic fake images, documents and identities capable of bypassing traditional verification systems.
The report also notes that fraud has become more accessible and scalable through fraud-as-a-service models. Toolkits available on the dark web now offer access to stolen personal data, malicious APIs and ready-made scam scripts, lowering the barrier for fraud operations.
On compliance, the report says only 20% of organizations treat compliance as a strategic tool that strengthens detection and supports proactive risk investment. Half of the organizations surveyed still see it mainly as an obligation or a safeguard against reputational or regulatory fallout.
The report argues that isolated fraud controls are no longer sufficient, as fraud now moves across networks and enterprises. It says risk teams need detection systems that combine device, behavioural and contextual intelligence across platforms. It also points to graph analysis as a way to map relationships between identities, devices and transactions to uncover coordinated fraud activity that may appear legitimate in isolation.
