LexisNexis: Synthetic Identity Fraud Rises Significantly in 2025

A recent report by LexisNexis Risk Solutions found synthetic identity fraud is on the rise.

According to its latest Cybercrime Report based on more than 100 billion online transactions in 2025, LexisNexis said 11% of frauds now involve a synthetic identity, representing an eight-fold global increase over 2024.

“While organizations are strengthening defenses across channels, cybercriminal networks are scaling automation, shifting tactics and probing for any available weaknesses across the digital customer journey. Increasingly, attackers rely on advanced bots and AI-driven tools to mimic human behavior and test defenses with unprecedented speed and accuracy,” said Stephen Topliss, vice president of fraud and identity at LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

Synthetic fraud represents a shift in tactics away from short-term opportunism by fraudsters since it takes months to stitch together new identities from various stolen attributes to long-term goals, since they can take months to properly establish. Fraudsters stitch together new identities from various stolen identity attributes and use them to commit a variety of crimes.

There had been a clear line between human and automated bot traffic. But after the first quarter 2025, agentic artificial intelligence – agentic commerce traffic – grew rapidly. Agentic commerce accounted for 1000 events in January and increased 450% in the fourth quarter.

The traffic, according to LexisNexis, was mostly related to credit card payments but there was also some activity on gaming and gambling sites. While there was no indication of malicious intent, the agents “present a new challenge for fraud detection longer term.”

Returning to bots, attacks were up 59% in 2025, with growth in ecommerce, gaming, and gambling. But traditional bot traffic was evolving in 2025, with evidence of more sophisticated simulation of human behavior.

Overall, gaming and gambling sites experienced a notable 76% rise in global attack rate in 2025, LexisNexis said.