Briefing Summary

Emerging Risks from the Middle East Conflict

Conflict creates the conditions fraud thrives in — urgency, confusion, disruption, and fear. Across the GCC, bad actors are moving fast to exploit the unfolding situation in the Middle East, embedding deception within investment opportunities, government communications, supply chains, and digital platforms. This briefing maps the emerging fraud landscape in real time, so your organisation knows what it's facing and what to do about it.

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What's Inside

• An analysis of the three dimensions enabling fraud right now - the surge in AI-generated disinformation making scams more credible and harder to detect, economic disruption creating openings for invoice manipulation and procurement fraud, and the personal vulnerability factors lowering verification thresholds across organisations
• A fraud typology summary covering eight distinct threat categories active in the current conflict environment - from advance-fee and conflict inheritance scams to AI deepfakes, government impersonation, business email compromise, bogus investment schemes, sovereign wealth fund fraud, and supply chain manipulation
• Real-world documented cases from the current conflict - including fake Emirates-branded investment websites, Dubai-domain crypto schemes, vishing campaigns impersonating UAE Ministry of Interior officials, and state-aligned spear-phishing campaigns from Chinese, Pakistani, and Iranian-linked threat actors
• A deep dive into AI-generated disinformation as a fraud enabler - including the three most widely shared fake videos gathering over 100 million combined views - and how synthetic content is anchoring charity scams, panic-driven investment fraud, and impersonation campaigns at scale
• A converging risk spotlight on crypto, phishing, and illicit finance - including a 700% surge in crypto outflows from Iran following the initial strikes, and how the same techniques used in the $1.5 billion Bybit hack are being transferred to corporate and financial institution targets
• A threat outlook across short, medium, and longer-term horizons - drawing on conflict fraud patterns from Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza - covering what to expect in the coming weeks and months

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Additional Download - CHECKLIST

Guidance For Business Checklist

A practical fraud checklist for Gulf businesses navigating conflict-driven risk. Covers eight action areas, from payment controls and counterparty due diligence to brand impersonation defence, cyber threats and staff awareness.