Brazil to Use AI to Track Consumer Scams Linked to Organized Crime

Brazil's Justice Ministry will use artificial intelligence to cross-reference public security and consumer-protection data in an effort to identify how organized crime groups finance themselves through scams, fraud and control of services used in daily life.

The initiative was formalized on Thursday through Ordinance 1,248/2026, which created a national program for integrating and sharing data and information for public security and social defense. According to O Globo, the project will analyze about 25 million police reports held by the National Public Security Secretariat, known as Senasp, alongside complaints filed on Consumidor.gov, Brazil's federal consumer complaint platform, as well as records from commercial boards and other databases.

This is single-source reporting based on O Globo's account and statements cited by the newspaper.

Chico Lucas, Brazil's national public security secretary, said consumer-related offenses may appear minor in legal terms but have become an important source of revenue for criminal organizations. He said groups exploit failures in consumer markets to build schemes that can generate millions of reais with less risk than street robberies or bank heists.

Lucas cited the example of a hamburger shop that advertised four sandwiches for R$100 on social media but never delivered them. Hundreds of police reports were filed, he said, but authorities believe there may have been thousands of victims who treated the case as a broken commercial offer rather than fraud. If 10,000 promotions were sold, the scheme would have raised R$100,000 without delivery costs, he said.

The project comes as Brazil records a shift in property crime. Lucas pointed to the 20th Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, released Thursday, which showed a broad decline in traditional property crimes while digital fraud has surged. O Globo reported separately that Brazil now records more than 250 scams per hour, making digital fraud the country's leading property offense.

Officials say the problem extends beyond online scams. Ricardo Morishita, Brazil's national consumer secretary, said criminal groups have also moved into essential services such as transportation, mobile service, internet access and gas distribution. In some areas, he said, threats and access restrictions prevent concessionaire workers from operating normally, degrading service for residents.

At a congressional hearing in April, Marcos Ferrari, president of the telecom industry group Conexis Brasil Digital, said organized crime controls internet access in 313 municipalities across six Brazilian states, affecting about 6 million people.

Daniel Hirata, a special adviser at the Justice Ministry and a researcher at the Federal Fluminense University's New Illegalisms Study Group, said adding consumer-protection data to a broader government data lake should improve the state's view of markets exploited by criminal groups. He said the integrated information could support police and investigators while also helping regulators identify weaknesses that allow criminal control to expand.

Carolina Grillo, coordinator of the same research group, said combining police reports with consumer complaints could help map the regions most affected and measure how organized crime changes daily life. She argued that regulators have struggled to curb criminal activity in sectors that are formally regulated, leaving poorer residents exposed to monopolies and extra charges, including for basic goods such as cooking gas.

The government's bet is that AI can detect patterns that remain invisible when police reports, consumer complaints and business records are examined separately. The policy question now is whether better data integration can translate into investigations and regulatory action strong enough to cut off criminal revenue streams.