Egypt

Egypt's statistics agency, CAPMAS, puts online fraud first among online crimes in 2024 to 2025, at 27%, ahead of online blackmail (19%), account hacking (15%), personal data theft (14%) and impersonation (12%). The audience is large: 42 million Facebook users, 41.3 million on TikTok and 20.1 million on Instagram, and about 82% of people use the internet. A national criminology researcher said in June 2026 that children and teenagers are among the most targeted for hacking and blackmail, often through online games.

Scammers reach people through WhatsApp and Telegram groups, through social media pages that copy banks and offer gifts to customers who register through a link, and by phone, posing as bank customer service and asking for card details. In one 2026 case a fake app offering free TV channels took over phones and sent texts saying money had left the victim's InstaPay account. When victims typed their PIN, their money was drained. Others pose as a charity with a parcel held at customs, as a judge, or as an agency selling housing or jobs abroad. The labour minister said in 2025 that workers lost large sums on forged Gulf contracts.

Foreigners lead many gangs. The FBC task platform, which took money from 537 people who complained to prosecutors, was led by three foreigners living in Egypt and run by Egyptians. In October 2026 police arrested 28 foreign nationals who posed as bank staff and said they turned from Egyptians to foreigners abroad once exposed.

Most losses in the reported cases run through mobile wallets and InstaPay, the central bank's instant payment system, which had about 16 million users in June 2025 and about 1.5 billion transactions worth about EGP 2.9 trillion in 2024. Gangs register bulk SIM cards on false data to open the wallets that receive the money. Police seized 1,135 SIM cards in the FBC case, 168 in a September 2026 online-shopping case and 3,367 in a 2023 crypto mining case. From the wallets the money often goes into cryptocurrency and abroad. Other routes are card details given to a fake bank caller and fake customs fees.

What stops a payment is mostly limits and rules. InstaPay allows EGP 70,000 a transfer, EGP 120,000 a day and EGP 400,000 a month. The four telecom wallets allow EGP 60,000 a day and EGP 200,000 a month, and ATM withdrawals are limited to EGP 30,000 a day. Banks say they never ask for passwords or one-time codes by phone. Since the 2 April 2026 circular every bank must watch cards, wallets and online payments in an anti-fraud department that reports cases at once to the central bank.

On the phone side, NTRA referred the four mobile operators to the Public Prosecution on 10 August 2026 over lines registered in citizens' names without their knowledge, after more than 4,000 complaints. It stopped sales of company and government lines and ordered the operators to text holders of those lines. Devices used for unregistered promotional calls have been disconnected since August 2025.

Recovered money is small beside the amounts stopped. The central bank governor said that in 2025 financial institutions stopped fraud attempts worth EGP 4 billion, up about 268%, and that EGP 116.8 million was recovered for victims, against EGP 6.5 million in 2024, about 18 times more. The two figures count different things. In single cases the prosecution freezes what it can reach. In the FBC case it froze the accused's funds, banned them from travel, stopped the seized SIM cards and froze the linked wallets. Police seizures reported in cases include about EGP 3 million in the September 2026 online-shopping case, about EGP 8 million in the InstaPay case and more than EGP 16 million in the fake bank-gift case.

Refund rules sit in the banks' own policies, which follow the central bank's customer protection instructions of February 2019. Banque Misr promises to refund unauthorised charges on stolen cards or fraudulent account activity, unless its records show the customer authorised the transaction or acted fraudulently. The National Bank of Egypt says customers must keep their password and one-time code secret and that a customer who does not is held fully liable for transactions made without consent.

A customer must tell the bank promptly. The bank gives a reference number within 2 working days and a reply within 15 working days, and a customer not satisfied can take the complaint to the central bank. In 2025, 97% of bank complaints were resolved within 15 working days.

Banks are the first stop. They received 3.4 million customer complaints of all kinds in 2025, up 24% from 2.8 million, and 953,000 in the first quarter of 2026, 28% more than a year earlier. A customer complains to the bank first and then, if the bank has not solved it, to the central bank, which received 63,373 in 2025 against 57,927 in 2024. They came through the Cabinet's complaints portal (49,135), the central bank's website (7,920) and its branches (6,318). Of these, 36,566 were referred to banks for another look and 35,017 were processed, 96%.

Other channels count their own complaints. The Consumer Protection Agency received 211,732 complaints and reports in 2025, 14,405 of them on online shopping and misleading advertising. NTRA took 263,262 telecom complaints in 2025, 123,857 in the first half and 139,405 in the second. In the second half 88% came through its call centre. The Cabinet's unified complaints system handled 2.1 million requests in 2025, up 17%, across 168 main government bodies. The Financial Regulatory Authority received 1,468 complaints about insurance companies.

The police take reports through the Ministry of Interior's information crimes unit, and the Public Prosecution takes complaints directly: in the FBC case 537 citizens complained. Every channel's count has risen since 2024.

The figure shown here is an estimate of 172,464 scam cases recorded by the authorities in 2025, with EGP 11.73 billion lost. It applies the cases India's national cyber crime portal recorded per adult to Egypt's adults, and the money is India's recorded loss as a share of its economy applied to Egypt's. It stands for what Egypt's police and prosecutors would record. Egyptian police announce scams case by case, through two units: the General Directorate for Combating Information Technology Crimes and the General Directorate for Combating Public Funds Crimes.

The cases show the scale of single gangs. In February 2025 police arrested 13 people over the FBC platform, with 101 victims and EGP 2 million taken at that point, and in July 2025 prosecutors sent 20 accused to the Economic Criminal Court, on the complaints of 537 people who lost more than EGP 15.9 million. In March 2025 police arrested 39 people behind three task platforms called GME, RGA and BTS, with victim reports of about EGP 12 million and seizures of about EGP 75 million. In July 2025 prosecutors investigated the VSA platform, with 23 accused arrested and 57 victims heard, who had lost about EGP 2.63 million.

In February 2026 the Mansoura Economic Court sentenced five people who sold phishing kits, ONNX Store and Caffeine, to between 2 and 3 years in prison and fines above EGP 1.5 million. They had built 240 fake sites.

Investment and task platforms dominate the police cases. FBC, GME, RGA, BTS, VSA and the coffee-marketing platform PILON all promised profit for watching videos, doing online tasks or logging in to market a product. Victims are paid small sums at first to win their trust, then asked for bigger deposits and to recruit others, as the VSA case shows. WhatsApp and Telegram groups promote the platforms and payments run through wallets. Betting and cryptocurrency schemes work the same way: three people were arrested in Assiut in January 2026 with 44 SIM cards.

Phishing and impersonation come next. Callers pose as bank customer service or, as the central bank warned on 10 September 2026, as InstaPay staff, and send links that steal data or take over a phone. Fake bank gift pages and fake free-TV apps work the same way. Online shopping is the biggest scam group in consumer complaints: the Consumer Protection Agency had 14,405 complaints on online shopping and misleading advertising in 2025, 6.8% of its 211,732.

Smaller scams include fake charity parcels with customs fees, fake discounted AI subscriptions paid in advance, fake housing allocations and false job contracts abroad. Interpol says lottery and investment scams, often by WhatsApp, are common across North Africa.

Egypt's strongest programme is the central bank's, and it is still being built. From April 2026 every bank must run an anti-fraud department that reports to its chief risk officer and tells the central bank at once of cases. A national campaign with the banks started in August 2026. The governor calls fraud a shared responsibility and wants closer coordination between central banks, financial institutions, law enforcement and the private sector. The results so far are EGP 4 billion of attempts stopped in 2025 and EGP 116.8 million recovered for victims.

The state has also acted on phone lines, the supply gangs use. Police seized 1,135 SIM cards in the FBC case and 168 in the PILON case. In August 2026 NTRA stopped sales of company and government lines, referred all four mobile operators to prosecutors and moved towards face-biometric checks of line owners. The national cybersecurity strategy, in its second edition for 2023 to 2027 with a third being prepared, concerns digital infrastructure. Its minister reports 45 local firms accredited as cybersecurity providers.

The gaps are in what happens to victims. Arrests follow complaints, and the refund promises in banks' policies cover unauthorised charges and exclude transactions the customer authorised, which is how many scams in these cases work, with victims typing a PIN or sending money themselves. The duties set out so far fall on banks and, for registering lines, on mobile operators.