E-commerce worldwide is suffering from an increasing number of customers committing fraud, according to an analysis conducted by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, an American company specializing in cybersecurity, which attributed this to the slowdown in the global economy on the one hand, and to organized crime activity on the other hand, noting that international gangs aim to recruit people to commit fraud while shopping online or to make their identities available to criminals.
The company operates a digital network to verify identities and online purchases, and the analysis was based on 116 billion transactions that took place during the past year. According to the analysis, real customers, unlike fraudsters who use stolen or forged identities or practice other forms of fraud, constituted 38.8% of the total fraud cases recorded globally during the year 2025, an increase of approximately two percentage points compared to 2024, and in Europe the percentage of these cases was known as “First-party fraud,” about 52%.
Jason Lin-Sellers, an expert in cybercrimes at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said: “There are groups that criminals deliberately target, such as people with poor creditworthiness or students, and the perpetrators give these people an additional 50 euros and explain to them how to carry out the operation.”
The German E-Commerce Federation confirmed that this phenomenon also affects the German market, pointing out that students or retirees are being attracted to participate in fraudulent methods, as many of them do not realize that they will become part of a fraudulent process, but rather receive a financial offer in exchange for providing their data.
For his part, spokesman for the trade association in the German state of Bavaria, Bernd Ullmann, said that fraud represents a growing and major problem, adding: “E-commerce is booming and continues to grow this year as well, and there are those who want to cut off a part of this cake, but this is not always done through legal means.” A common method in this field is not paying the value of goods that are delivered against an invoice or credit, or claiming that they were not ordered at all.
