Major sporting events not only attract fans, they also attract criminal organizations.
Large-scale sporting competitions are today highly publicized and commercialized, generating a significant number of transactions and in which criminal networks interfere in search of more money, but also victims.
A transfer to reserve an apartment. A second for tickets to attend a match. Then nothing more. The site disappears. The contact disappears. The money seems to have evaporated. During the 2026 FIFA World Cup, this scenario will be massive, repeated and industrialized. By concentrating millions of travelers and billions of transactions in a few weeks, the World Cups generate exceptional economic pressure which often exceeds the ability of users to control and opens an ideal space for fraudsters.
But the real issue goes well beyond the isolated scam and the loss of money. In reality, purchasing a fake ticket or paid for accommodation online that does not exist ends up fueling opaque economic structures that develop more easily during large gatherings.
A two-speed economy: visible and invisible
Once money is transferred, a few hundred euros from a supporter quickly become a fragmented flow, moved between multiple accounts, and integrated into larger circulation systems until they lose all connection with the original victim.
But beyond the simple financial aspect, there is also that of personal data which allows organizations to identify and catalog their victims. Name, first name, gender, address, banking information: valuable and sensitive information which can in certain cases feed human exploitation networks. A major issue that should be highlighted, especially since the International Labor Organization estimates that $236 million in illicit profits are generated each year from the 27.6 million people trapped in forced labor situations.
What makes this invisible economy particularly complicated to detect is that it uses the same flows, the same platforms and sometimes the same infrastructures as the visible economy. It is in this space that the lines between fraud, money laundering and human exploitation become blurred. Not because they are identical, but because they use the same circulation vectors.
The decisive role of financial institutions
If the parallel between the visible economy and the underground economy can hinder the fight against fraud, a fraudulent ecosystem can also provide financial institutions with the means to detect its own network. It’s all about knowing what to look at. Financial institutions occupy a unique position in the financial visibility chain in that they see not just isolated transactions, but overall behaviors.
They may see sudden spikes in payments between individuals with no relationship history. They have the tools to identify accounts receiving funds and transferring them almost immediately, with little or no associated out-of-pocket expenses. They can detect clusters of hotel reservations accompanied by late cash withdrawals or concentrated in certain geographic areas. They are also able to spot indirect links between accounts through common devices, digital identifiers or login patterns. Taken in isolation, these signals are weak. Together, they become a structural reading and allow us to distinguish individual behavior from an organized system.
This aggregation capacity positions banks and credit unions as central players not only in the fight against fraud, but also in the detection of forms of trafficking and exploitation of human beings. As pointed out The Knoble in its 2026 reportmajor international sporting events can accelerate the risks of fraud, human trafficking and financial exploitation, reinforcing the need for increased cooperation between financial institutions and public authorities.
Understanding financial flows to protect individuals
The increase in fraud and human trafficking and forms of exploitation associated with major events are not one-off anomalies. The 2026 FIFA World Cup is not the cause of these phenomena, but it acts as a revealer and an amplifier.
The World Cup will not only be a global sporting event. It will also be a test of collective reading of our economic systems. And this is precisely where the contemporary challenge of financial security comes into play: no longer just protecting payments, but understanding what these payments say when they are linked.
Because behind each transaction, there is a broader reality than the simple financial exchange. A dynamic. A network. Sometimes a system. And our ability to detect them comes directly back to our ability to protect individuals.
