Authorities freeze 10,000 suspicious cards, blocking UZS 1.72 trillion in fraudulent transfers

A newly introduced unified digital network has successfully frozen more than 10,000 fraudulent bank cards, preventing the illegal siphon of UZS 1.72 trillion over its first five months of full operation. Colonel Zubaydullayev, Head of the Cybercrime Department under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, disclosed the performance metrics during a plenary session of the Senate of Oliy Majlis.

The image was created by artificial intelligence.

The briefing outlined a sharp escalation in digital fraud, noting that cybercrime accounted for 49.6% of all recorded criminal offenses across the country in 2025. This specialized sector has expanded consistently since 2021, with total cumulative damages inflicted on citizens now surpassing UZS 2 trillion. Over this period, the operational methodologies utilized by bad actors diversified rapidly, with recognized categories of digital fraud jumping from 18 distinct types to 64. Electronic payment networks serve as the primary vector for these illegal operations, appearing in 96% of documented incidents.

Statistical tracking from law enforcement highlights malware deployment as the single most prevalent cyber threat, driving 38% of cases. False-identity buyer or vendor scams accounted for 18% of incidents, followed by digital exchange and online trading schemes at 16%, voice phishing calls at 7%, and fraudulent micro-loan applications at 3%. Department officials observed that just a few years ago, local law enforcement possessed very few technical resources specialized in tracing or suppressing these fast-moving digital threats.

To close this defensive gap, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Central Bank, and the Prosecutor General’s Office designed and launched a unified anti-fraud platform. Following a trial phase earlier in the year, the system is now permanently operational. The inter-agency architecture acts on immediate automatic fraud detection metrics or citizen reports, allowing banks to legally lock down compromised financial accounts within 24 hours. Law enforcement representatives emphasized that the real-time centralized data structure dramatically cuts administrative response delays.

The modern tech framework operates alongside twin artificial intelligence systems. The first component, dubbed Card-Block, operates in concert with the Central Bank to run immediate account locks. The second asset, an analytical engine named Turon, manages and tracks complex, trans-border financial offenses.

A third system, Cyber Shield, currently undergoes field testing to detect and quarantine malicious code blocks. The application has already flagged and deactivated 385 active phishing programs, insulating data and funds belonging to more than 500,000 account holders from remote theft. Driven by these automated measures, the official resolution rate for domestic cybercrimes increased 3.5 times this year, while overall detection efficiency rose fivefold.

These continuous structural interventions have yielded the first drop in baseline fraud reports recorded in years, with total filings falling by 6% – a net decrease of approximately 2,500 formal complaints.

To support the technological upgrades, authorities executed an expansive public digital hygiene campaign across the country. Specialized teams held roughly 250,000 instructional events, distributed 27,000 public service videos alongside 1.7 million advisory flyers, and generated warning content across 740 prominent regional web resources. These coordinated informational posts pulled a total of 17 million individual views on mainstream social networks, extending digital literacy guidance to an estimated audience of over 22 million citizens.