India 2nd Biggest Target Of International Scam Syndicates: Meta Report

India has emerged as one of the major targets of international scam syndicates, just behind English-speaking users across the US, according to Meta's Semiannual Adversarial Threat Report. Cybercriminals were planning and executing the scams targeting innocent online users in a professional and organised manner whilst adopting new artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve the scale, speed, and credibility of their operations.

The report stated that scammers were creating convincing fake accounts with coherent backstories, authentic-looking profile pictures and videos to deceive the users with 'hyper-personalised' and 'culturally nuanced' tone.

"Our investigations surfaced that Criminal Scam Syndicates most frequently targeted English-speaking users across the US, followed by users in India," the report highlighted.

"Mandarin-speaking audiences including those in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore were the next groups targeted, with targeting of audiences in Japan and South Korea close behind."

It added that financial scams remain one of the most persistent and adaptive threats affecting the online ecosystem. The rapid rise of AI tools has accelerated the sophistication and scale of these operations. Some criminal scam syndicates were now operating with business-like specialisation, training, and operational security, making it an increasingly difficult task for law enforcement agencies to monitor and trace them.

"These actors range from opportunistic individuals to sophisticated criminal scam syndicates (CSS), and they routinely evolve their tactics, techniques, and procedures to appear legitimate and evade detection measures," the report highlighted.

Some Of The Common Scam Archetypes:

• Advance payment scams
• Investment scams
• Gambling scams
• Romance scams
• User support scams
• Celebrity impersonation scams
• Government impersonation scams

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In Southeast Asia, criminal syndicates involved in romance and investment scams used convincing lifestyle content to establish legitimacy. After the unsuspecting user had lowered their guard, the scammers shifted into direct messaging and off-platform channels to further the long con.

Meta stated that it recently disrupted a "Pakistan-based domestic-targeting operation anchored in off-platform websites and coordinated amplification by pages and personas".

"The case highlights the use of AI-assisted content generation across languages to increase output quality and consistency, and the use of identity misrepresentation (including stolen imagery) to appear locally authentic."

Cartels and drug trafficking organisations also present pressing and complex risks, driven by real-world violence and persistent attempts to use online services for recruitment, coordination, extortion, trafficking, facilitation, and propagandising.

Meta said it removed 10.9 million Facebook and Instagram accounts, 600,000 Facebook Pages, and 112,000 Ad Accounts in 2025 for violating its policies against fraud, scams and deceptive practices and dangerous organisations and individuals.