Colombia: bank impersonation scams rise

Banco de Bogotá warned about a rise in fraudulent schemes that combine text messages, phone calls and malicious links to impersonate well-known entities and steal customers’ confidential data. The coverage also describes websites that mimic official pages to capture login credentials and financial information.

What tactics are they using?

The campaigns blend phishing, smishing and vishing to make warnings, calls or websites appear legitimate when they are really meant to steal information. According to coverage by El País Cali, criminals use text messages, phone calls and fake links to send users to sites that imitate official pages.

At the same time, a report from La Kalle, using figures released by the National Police Cyber Center, said Colombia recorded more than 64,000 complaints linked to digital scams during 2025. Reported tactics include impersonation of financial entities, fraudulent messages and WhatsApp account theft.

What other frauds were reported in Colombia?

During 2026, Colombian authorities warned about text messages impersonating Bre-B and directing users to fraudulent links to confirm supposed transfers, with the goal of obtaining sensitive information. That tactic adds to schemes that imitate banks and other entities to capture credentials and financial data.

Another report, based on data from the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce, said the agency had received 40,316 complaints of impersonation from 2020 through June 2026. The same report attributed more than 765,000 fraud claims to Colombia’s banking sector in 2025, for an amount above 967 billion pesos, according to an Asobancaria report published in September 2026.

What do the reports say about the evolution of fraud?

DPL News said reported cybercrime in Colombia rose 36% in the first five months of 2026 and that nearly four in 10 citizens were victims of fraud in the previous 12 months, although those figures do not identify the primary statistical source. The same publication said ColCERT confirmed that cybercriminals would be using artificial intelligence to make their campaigns more precise and harder to detect, and it stated that fraud accounted for nearly 80% of the incidents handled by the team over the previous two years.

The mix of SMS, calls, fake links and cloned websites has emerged as the core of the country’s most repeated campaigns, with impersonation of banks, financial services and even Bre-B among the most visible tactics in the reports reviewed.

Bancolombia and bank impersonation scams

Bancolombia is among the entities most often impersonated in digital fraud campaigns, within a pattern that combines SMS, calls and fake links to steal credentials. The problem is not new in Colombia and fits the same bank impersonation scheme described in the report.

The reports cited in the article explain that criminals use text messages, phone calls and cloned pages to pose as banks and other well-known entities. They also say victims are sent to sites that imitate official pages to capture financial and access data.