UK Cybercrime Journal: H1 2026 Social Media Fraud Trends

**Executive summary:** H1 2026 saw a marked shift from email-centric fraud to large-scale social-media-driven scams: HMRC uncovered a suspected £153m TikTok tax-fraud scheme and arrests were made, Lloyds reported that 68% of customer fraud originated on Meta platforms, and UK Finance recorded £221.5m lost to investment scams; the report highlights organised groups using fake accounts, platform advertisement ecosystems and AI/LLMs to scale social engineering attacks and urges coordinated defensive actions and user reporting.