2024 in Review: Major Fraud Events and What We Can Learn from Them

Introduction

In late 2023, we published an article asking whether the macroeconomic environment of high inflation and high interest rates would bring about a ‘golden age for fraud’. We are now on the other side of 2024, and with some major frauds committed around the world, this article delves into a handful of the most notorious cases that captured international attention and what we can learn from them.

Major Fraud Cases in 2024

Evergrande

Chinese property developer Evergrande sparked a steep decline in the country’s real estate market when it went into default with USD 300B of debt in 2021. In March 2024, a probe by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) found that the property giant had inflated revenues by an astounding USD 78B over the two-year period before its collapse.¹

Truong My Lan

In April 2024, Truong My Lan, a Vietnamese real estate tycoon, was convicted of misappropriation of USD 27B and embezzlement of USD 12B from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB), one of the country’s largest banks, over a period of 11 years. Whilst Vietnamese law prohibits any one person from owning more than a 5% share in an individual bank, she allegedly used hundreds of shell companies and people acting as proxies to amass a stake of more than 90% in SCB. She was accused of using this power to take out loans equal to 93% of the bank’s total lending.²

Italian Tax Credits Fraud Scheme

In April 2024, 22 arrests were made across Italy, Austria, Romania, and Slovakia, as part of an investigation led by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO).³ In Italy, the Guardia di Finanza (financial police) executed a freezing order over assets including luxury cars and watches, with suspects involved having fraudulently obtained tax credits worth EUR 600M from the Italian authorities by submitting false information and forged documentation. The group is also said to have targeted the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), part of the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the EU’s COVID-19 recovery fund.⁴ 

Yadi Zhang and Jian Wen

In May 2024, Jian Wen was jailed for money laundering, having converted bitcoin into cash and property to help launder the proceeds of a significant fraud carried out in China between 2014 and 2017 by her then-boss, Yadi Zhang. According to the sentencing remarks in R -v- Jian Wen, “Over 40 billion Renminbi (approximately £4.6 billion) was invested into the fraudulent scheme by over 128,000 investors.”⁵ Also known as Zhimin Qian, Yadi Zhang has since been arrested, with her trial due to take place in September 2025.⁶

Jonathan Arafiena

Jonathan Arafiena was charged with leading a GBP 12m investment fraud scheme having “masterminded one of the biggest investment fraud cases that [the Fraud Operations team at the City of London Police] have dealt with,” according to Detective Inspector Gareth Dothie. Jonathan Arafiena and two others tricked hundreds of individuals into investing in non-existent or worthless shares, with the largest amount lost by a single victim totaling some GBP 300k. ⁷

Peraire-Bueno Brothers

In May 2024, brothers Anton and James Peraire-Bueno were arrested for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. According to the indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), the brothers “manipulated and tampered with the process and protocols by which transactions are validated and added to the Ethereum blockchain. In doing so, they fraudulently gained access to pending private transactions and used that access to alter certain transactions and obtain their victims' cryptocurrency,” which had a total value of approximately USD 25M.⁸

Arup

In February 2024, engineering consultancy Arup was the victim of a deepfake fraud whereby AI-generated voices and images were used to impersonate senior officers of the company, successfully persuading an employee to hand over HKD 200M (GBP 20M).⁹

Common Themes and Insights

Pressures on Interest-Sensitive Sectors

Along with many other Chinese real estate developers, Evergrande was highly leveraged, relying heavily on borrowings to fuel its growth. A significant slowdown in the sector caused a surge in missed debt repayments, including Evergrande’s own in December 2021.¹⁰ In December 2024, analysts at JP Morgan wrote in a credit research report that they expect these same developers to be the biggest source of defaults in Asia in 2025 as they come up to their first bond repayments since restructuring their debts.¹¹ The constraints on this sector that gave rise to fraudulent revenue recognition are clear, and with the macroeconomic pressures that we commented on in late 2023 still largely persisting, we anticipate that further fraud will emerge in this and other capital-intensive (and more interest-sensitive) industries.

Corruption Risks in Emerging Markets

Emerging markets have long been a significant source of corruption risks. The Truong My Lan case shows that such risks are clearly present in Vietnam, and we believe that ambitious economic growth targets have been a clear contributory factor. The World Bank classifies economies into four income groups: low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high income.¹² At the time of writing, Vietnam is classified as having a lower-middle income economy,¹³ but has outlined plans to reach high-income status by 2045.¹⁴ Targets like these give rise to corruption risks across emerging markets and organisations should conduct appropriate due diligence on associated third parties when undertaking work in these regions.

Covid-19 Fraud

As governments around Europe rushed to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, many fell victim to fraudsters looking to profit from the increased public funding available, often with reduced scrutiny. Whilst the EUR 600M taken in Italy relates to tax credits, that the group reportedly also targeted Covid relief funding is no surprise. Earlier this month, we published an article on fraud and corruption in the UK Government’s Covid-related Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS) and in December 2024, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves appointed Tom Hayhoe as Covid Counter-Fraud Commissioner. With the new UK Government focused intently on recovering public money lost to pandemic-related fraud, we expect more Covid-related fraud to come to light.

Investment Fraud, Crypto, and Artificial Intelligence

With investment fraud being by no means a new development, one might expect that these practices would have seen less success as the public became wise to them. Yadi Zhang’s scheme in China and Jonathan Arafiena’s in the UK show, however, that such operations are as effective as ever.

Zhang’s huge wealth of bitcoin and the Peraire-Bueno brothers’ Ethereum theft highlight fraudsters’ fondness for cryptocurrencies, given that they are largely unregulated and far harder to trace than more typical transactions. Further, the U.S. President has vowed that his country will be the “crypto capital of the planet”¹⁵, and we anticipate that his perceived legitimisation of these alternative investments may convert previous sceptics. We also expect that cryptocurrencies will continue to be as popular as ever with fraudsters, both as a payment vehicle and as a store of wealth.

Whilst the Arup case highlights the risk of AI-enabled fraud against organisations, the use of deepfake video to commit fraud is by far and away most prevalent on social media sites such as Facebook, where AI has been used to generate videos of famous business people or politicians endorsing fraudulent investment schemes, prompting the New York State Attorney General to issue an investor alert on the matter.¹⁶ As AI technologies continue to develop rapidly, we expect to see more sophisticated use of AI to commit fraud against organisations and individuals alike.

Moreover, we believe that we could see these three themes converge in the form of traditional investment schemes ‘supercharged’ by AI, with cryptocurrencies possibly a common purported investment vehicle.

How Ankura Can Help

These cases highlight a wide array of fraud-related issues and Ankura is well-positioned to help organisations navigate even the most complex matters, with expertise across forensic accounting investigations, handling corruption risks, asset tracing, and delivering training on best practices in the detection and prevention of fraud risks.

For more information about Ankura’s Investigations and Forensic Accounting practice and how we help you, please contact Jonathan Brown, Lorynn Demetriades, Felix Vetter, and Sasi-Kanth Mallela.

^{[1] Evergrande: China property giant and its founder accused of $78bn fraud - BBC News}

^{[2] Truong My Lan: Vietnamese billionaire sentenced to death for $44bn fraud - BBC News}

^{[3] Investigation ‘Resilient Crime’: 22 arrests in raid against criminal organisation suspected of €600 million fraud involving NextGenerationEU funds | European Public Prosecutor’s Office}

^{[4] Investigation ‘Resilient Crime’: EPPO seeks to clarify highly complex fraud scheme | European Public Prosecutor’s Office}

^{[5] R v Jian Wen sentencing remarks}

^{[6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-21/chinese-woman-pleads-not-guilty-to-laundering-bitcoin-in-uk-case} 

^{[7] Criminals who laundered fraudulently-obtained life savings in £12 million shares scam sentenced | The Crown Prosecution Service}

^{[8] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1351996/dl}

^{[9] UK engineering firm Arup falls victim to £20m deepfake scam | Engineering | The Guardian}

^{[10] What’s Next for China Evergrande After Liquidation Order - Bloomberg}

^{[11] China Property Developers Hit by Real Estate Crisis May Default Again in 2025 - Bloomberg}

^{[12] WDI - The World by Income and Region}

^{[13] World Bank Country and Lending Groups – World Bank Data Help Desk}

^{[14] World Bank Document}

^{[15] Trump, Appealing to Bitcoin Fans, Vows U.S. Will Be ‘Crypto Capital of the Planet’ - The New York Times}

^{[16] INVESTOR ALERT: Attorney General James Warns New Yorkers of Investment Scams Using AI-Manipulated Videos}

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^{© Copyright 2025. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of Ankura Consulting Group, LLC., its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals. Ankura is not a law firm and cannot provide legal advice.}