Meet the Nominees – Scam Fighter Awards at the Global Anti-Scam Summit Europe 2026

As scam networks become more organised, cross-border and technology-enabled, effective responses increasingly depend on practical action across the whole ecosystem. The Scam Fighter Awards at the Global Anti-Scam Summit Europe 2026 recognise excellence in combating scams.

This year’s shortlisted nominees reflect the five award categories: awareness and education, cross-sector collaboration, investigation and research, policy and regulatory action, and technological solutions. Together, they show how the anti-scam ecosystem is responding from multiple angles, helping people recognise scams, enabling organisations to share intelligence, uncovering criminal methods, strengthening policy responses and developing tools to prevent, detect and disrupt scam activity.

Each nominee has been selected for the impact, innovation and scalability of their work. Their initiatives demonstrate how governments, industry, researchers, technology providers and civil society are advancing practical responses to one of the most urgent digital safety challenges facing consumers and organisations today.

Award Categories

The Scam Fighter Awards cover five categories, each reflecting a different part of the global anti-scam response.

1. Awareness or Education focuses on campaigns, training and public education that help people recognise scams and make safer decisions.
   
2. Cross-Sector Collaboration recognises partnerships between government, industry, non-profits, law enforcement and other stakeholders working together against scams.
   
3. Investigation or Research highlights work that uncovers scam trends, criminal methods and evidence that can inform prevention, detection and enforcement.
   
4. Policy or Regulatory Initiative recognises frameworks, rules and public policy efforts that improve accountability and strengthen systemic responses to scams.
   
5. Technological Solution focuses on tools, platforms and technical innovations that help prevent, detect or disrupt scam activity.

Jury

The shortlisted nominees were selected by an independent jury representing public policy, law enforcement, technology, banking, media and cybersecurity.

• Angelique Miet – European Commission
• Edvardas Sileris – Europol
• John Kirwan – TikTok
• Lynn van Meijgaard – Dutch Banking Association
• Nick Stapleton – BBC Studios
• Thomas Rousson – Orange

Meet the Nominees

The shortlisted nominees show how organisations around the world are turning anti-scam ideas into real-world action

Best Awareness Campaign or Educational Programme

UK Financial Conduct Authority

The UK Financial Conduct Authority is nominated for its Firm Checker campaign, which encourages consumers to verify financial firms before investing or borrowing. The campaign promotes a clear protective action: checking whether a firm is authorised by the FCA and has permission to provide the relevant financial services.

The campaign makes scam prevention practical and memorable. By focusing on a specific action consumers can take before money is at risk, the FCA helps turn general scam awareness into behaviour that can reduce exposure to investment and financial scams.

S.A.F.E. by Ayleen Charlotte

Founded by Ayleen Charlotte, known globally from The Tinder Swindler, S.A.F.E. is the first victim-centered, trauma-informed fraud education and training programme in the world. Every training is built to give professionals the tools to better understand, support and communicate with victims, so that victims feel truly heard and supported. When victims feel safe, they speak up sooner, and the path to recovery begins the moment the conversation does.

The programme reaches professionals across financial services, law enforcement, customer support, legal services, healthcare, education and public awareness. A dedicated module on Breaking the Scam Spell trains financial institutions to recognize when someone is still under a scammer’s influence and to guide them out of the spell before more harm is done. In Q4 2026, S.A.F.E. will also launch the S.A.F.E. Academy, an online learning environment with structured modules and certification, open to both professionals and individuals.

Best Cross-Sector Collaboration

Cifas

Cifas is nominated for the International Fraud Data Standard, a framework designed to support safer, faster and more consistent fraud intelligence sharing across sectors and borders. The initiative builds on Cifas’ broader work in fraud prevention through secure data and intelligence sharing.

The International Fraud Data Standard responds to one of the main challenges in scam prevention: fragmented intelligence. By supporting a clearer model for sharing fraud signals responsibly, the initiative aims to help organisations act earlier, collaborate with greater confidence and disrupt scams before harm spreads across sectors or jurisdictions.

Stop Scams UK

Stop Scams UK is nominated for its Blocked SIMs initiative, which brings telecoms, banks, technology platforms, law enforcement and government oversight together to disrupt SIM-enabled scam infrastructure.

The initiative targets UK Pay-As-You-Go SIMs being used overseas to create fake accounts and receive one-time passcodes. By treating blocked SIMs as a signal for wider fraudulent activity, the programme helps different sectors act on shared intelligence and make this form of abuse harder, more expensive and less scalable for criminal networks.

Best Investigation or Research

Visa

Visa is nominated for Visa Scam Disruption, an investigative practice focused on identifying and stopping complex scam operations as they emerge. The approach combines network-level intelligence, proactive investigation, data analysis and collaboration with financial institutions, law enforcement and other partners.

The nominated work shows how scam disruption can move beyond individual incidents to expose connected criminal operations. By mapping relationships between merchants, payments and supporting infrastructure, Visa Scam Disruption demonstrates how investigation at scale can help reduce losses and weaken the systems that allow scams to operate.

Bitdefender

Bitdefender is nominated for its Global Scam Intelligence research, which uses large-scale real-world threat data to analyse scam activity across multiple channels, regions and attack types. The research draws on signals from URLs, messages, ads, SMS, voice calls and messaging platforms to examine scams as an active and organised threat landscape.

The work helps move scam research beyond surveys and victim recall alone by looking at how scam operations behave in real time. Its focus on cross-channel patterns, regional differences and operational tactics offers useful insight for regulators, telecoms providers, banks, cybersecurity teams and law enforcement working to understand how scams are evolving.

Best Policy or Regulatory Initiative

Cifas

Cifas is also nominated in the Policy or Regulatory Initiative category for the International Fraud Data Standard. From a policy perspective, the initiative aims to create a scalable model for lawful, accountable and real-time fraud intelligence sharing.

The proposal addresses a central challenge for policymakers and industry: enabling faster action against scams while maintaining appropriate safeguards around privacy, legal certainty and responsible data use. By focusing on standards, governance and cross-sector confidence, the initiative could support stronger and more consistent anti-fraud collaboration across jurisdictions.

Global Fraud Summit 2026

The Global Fraud Summit 2026 is nominated for bringing governments, law enforcement, industry and civil society together to strengthen the international response to fraud. Organised by UNODC and INTERPOL, the summit focused on coordinated action against a rapidly evolving transnational threat.

The initiative reflects the growing recognition that scams and fraud networks cannot be addressed by one jurisdiction or sector alone. By convening public and private stakeholders at global level, the Global Fraud Summit helped push fraud higher on the policy agenda and supported stronger cooperation against organised scam networks.

Best Technological Solution

Salv

Salv is nominated for Salv Bridge, a secure intelligence-sharing platform used by financial institutions to exchange information on fraud, sanctions and financial crime cases. It replaces phone calls, email chains and bilateral agreements with governed, encrypted and real-time workflows.

Cases are initiated either directly between institutions or by pooling suspicious entities, such as offboarded customers, across the network. In fast-moving fraud cases, delays determine whether funds are recovered or lost. Salv Bridge enables institutions to share relevant information before criminals can move money out of reach.

It is one of only two platforms globally to have demonstrated compliant cross-border sharing of encrypted PII data for financial crime prevention. It currently connects 100+ financial institutions across 16+ EU and UK jurisdictions.

Charm Security

Charm Security is nominated for its Agentic AI Workforce for scams and fraud prevention and resolution. The company’s AI agents span the full fraud lifecycle, providing capabilities across fraud investigation, customer intervention, and intelligence gathering to identify emerging threats.

Charm’s Agentic Workforce focuses on human-centric fraud, including the moments when victims are being manipulated, frontline teams are responding, and investigators are trying to connect scattered signals. By combining fraud expertise and behavioural science, the solution supports earlier intervention, stronger triage, and more actionable intelligence against scam operations.

Winners will be selected through jury evaluation and audience participation at Global Anti-Scam Summit Europe 2026, recognising initiatives that demonstrate impact, innovation and scalability in the fight against scams.

Join Us at Global Anti-Scam Summit Europe 2026

The Scam Fighter Awards will take place at the Global Anti-Scam Summit Europe 2026 in Lisbon, bringing together leaders from government, law enforcement, financial services, technology, consumer protection, cybersecurity and the wider anti-scam community.

Join us at the Summit to hear from the shortlisted nominees, take part in the awards programme and connect with organisations working to strengthen the global response to scams.

Submit a Nomination

The Scam Fighter Awards will continue across future GASA events and regional summits throughout the year. Organisations working on scam prevention, detection, disruption, enforcement, education, policy, research or technology can submit initiatives for upcoming awards.

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