As people all over the world get ready to travel, spend money, and actively engage online during the 2026 FIFA World Cup—spanning 16 different venues across the US, Canada, as well as Mexico—The Knoble and Feedzai are offering a digital tool to enable and guide FIs to effectively detect various illicit activities and scams activity targeting unsuspecting customers and online systems.
In a recent update, The Knoble, a nonprofit network that brings together FIs, law enforcement agencies, and various practitioners to address unlawful activities like financial exploitation, with support from Feedzai, a global tech firm that helps banks detect and prevent financial crime, reveals how criminals exploit busy events, from carrying out fake ticket sales and rental scams to other abusive activities.
The update shared by Feedzai also reveals how FIs may detect, prevent, and respond to these threats, with more guidance on how institutions may support and protect vulnerable customers.
Although these crimes occur year-round, major events may actually aggregate and localize scam activity as well as enforcement efforts.
Around this year’s Super Bowl, coordinated anti-trafficking operations led to nearly “30 arrests and the identification of more than 70 victims.”
Meanwhile, financial institutions have reported increases of “up to 80% in scam incidents surrounding major event ticket releases, as demand and urgency peak.”
Although many consumers are familiar with ticket fraud and travel scams, the update released by Feedzai highlights a more complex situation: these schemes often connect to “broader forms of human exploitation.”
Criminal networks tend to use scams not only to steal funds, but also to move funds across accounts or “recruit individuals into activities such as money mule schemes, where victims unknowingly transfer illicit funds.”
In more serious cases, financial patterns that are said to be tied to travel, lodging, and payments can “signal human trafficking operations.”
This convergence of fraud and exploitation underscores the “need for a more integrated approach to detection and prevention.”
Nuno Sebastião, CEO and Co-Founder of Feedzai said that by analyzing the patterns of “how money moves and understanding signals of criminal activity and exploitation, the better the chances are that we can prevent real harm from being done.”
Financial institutions can see patterns “across accounts, payment types, and geographies—giving them a unique ability to detect suspicious activity.”
According to the update, potential red flags could include the following:
- Unusual spikes in P2P payments or first-time transfers
- Clusters of hotel bookings. late-night ATM withdrawals
- Accounts quickly receiving and moving money with little personal spending
- Several different accounts linked by shared contact details or devices
By linking together signals across different systems, banking platforms can identify coordinated activity that may actually go unnoticed, “making them a critical line of defense against both scams and exploitation.”