“Peak Season Is Fraud Season” – FreightWaves Releases Q2 2026 Freight Fraud Index 

“Peak season is fraud season.” It’s a catchy slogan, and one shippers would do well to heed. Fraud spikes every year during peak season, and this year is no different. It’s fitting that FreightWaves used the slogan in an email sharing its Q2 2026 Freight Fraud Index.

It isn’t just an index of statistics on fraud, to which those in the international shipping industry fell victim, though it includes that. FreightWaves’ Freight Fraud Index is a full 18-page report. It not only warns of international shipping industry fraud that’s trending up and down, but it also gives knowledge and tips that could help shippers avoid these and similar costly frauds.

As FreightWaves puts it in the introduction to its report, “The Freight Fraud Index is built from Highway Risk team investigations, customer-reported theft events, platform data, and the industry developments shaping each quarter. Our goal isn’t to catalogue every fraud event — it’s to explain what changed, why it matters, and how brokers should adapt.”

While the index is aimed more at logistics companies like freight forwarders within the international shipping industry, it’s also a great resource for shippers who’d work with those companies to handle their imports and exports. I should note here that neither myself nor anyone else at Universal Cargo is affiliated with or paid to promote FreightWaves or its Freight Fraud Index. We’re just always on the lookout for things that help the people and companies with whom we do business.

Below, I’ll give a few highlights from the Freight Fraud Index as well as a handful of posts from Universal Cargo’s own blog to help shippers recognize and avoid fraud.

Trust Is the Attack

Fraudsters are going after companies in the international shipping industry by impersonating businesses they already work with and trust. In its Executive Summary, the Freight Fraud Index describes it as “trust itself became the attack surface.”

On a broad scale, we here at Universal Cargo have seen a similar tactic many times over the years with other people or so-called businesses calling themselves Universal Cargo, even using similar logos to ours or creating clone versions of our website to try to get people to think they’re us.

Getting back to the index, if you’ve noticed a lot more of those “Scam Likely” calls, you’re not alone. The leading and growing way fraudsters are going after businesses is through communication-based attacks:

Communication-based attacks — compromised inboxes, spoofed emails, account takeovers, impersonation calls — accounted for 50% of all classified fraud vectors, up from 42.7% in Q1. Highway blocked 784,201 fraudulent inbound emails and 109,995 fraudulent or spoofed phone calls, both up roughly 50% quarter over quarter. And fraudsters started impersonating Highway itself: phishing and impersonation activity jumped 282%.

That impersonation issue is one the Freight Fraud Index emphasizes businesses to remain on guard to avoid:

…verification is not a onetime event. Identity, ownership, communication, and operational behavior all contribute to whether a carrier relationship can be trusted at the moment freight moves. The brokers reducing their exposure are the ones validating trust through the entire carrier lifecycle — not just at onboarding.

Stats of Frauds on the Rise

Fraudulent phone calls, emails, and phishing activity are way up in the second quarter of 2026 compared to the same quarter of last year. Here’s data the Freight Index shares on that:

48.5% quarter on quarter increase in fraudulent inbound emails blocked (784,201; +58.3% vs Q2 2025).
53.2% quarter on quarter increase in fraudulent and spoofed phone calls blocked (109,995; +159% vs Q2 2025).
282% quarter on quarter increase in Highway impersonation and phone phishing activity (1,740 list additions).

Why Peak Season Is Worse

FreightWaves continued to emphasize that successful fraudsters almost always succeeded through exploiting trust, but then the freight index turned to the seasonal threat of peak season:

The second half of the year consistently creates conditions that favor fraud…. bringing lighter staffing, increased freight volume, and slower response times. As peak shipping season accelerates, brokers face greater pressure to move freight quickly, onboard unfamiliar carriers, and make operational decisions under tighter timelines.

Fraudsters understand those pressures. They don’t create urgency. They exploit it. Throughout peak season, social engineering campaigns become more effective because they rely on operational pressure: after-hours calls claiming to represent the assigned carrier, last-minute reroute requests, updated contact information, and situations designed to encourage teams to bypass established verification procedures.

Clearly, this is particularly important for freight forwarders like Universal Cargo to watch out for, but these risks extend to shippers working with freight forwarders as well.

Always make sure communications regarding your shipments are coming from your actual freight forwarder and not someone impersonating them. For more great advice to make sure your trust isn’t exploited, check out the full Freight Fraud Index from FreightWaves. Also, follow the below blog post links for more on avoiding fraud with your international shipping.

Blog Posts on Avoiding International Shipping Scams

The following links don’t represent all the posts Universal Cargo has made relating fraud shippers should watch out for when importing and exporting goods. However, this is a good handful of posts we think you’ll find helpful:

Watch Out! Chinese Exporters Attempting to Skirt Tariffs with Fraud, Making U.S. Importers Complicit

Cargo Theft Up 42% in California

Made in Vietnam? Nope — Still Made in China — Shippers Beware

Shippers Beware: How to Avoid Fake Freight Forwarder Scams

7 Tips to Beat Cargo Theft by ID Theft Like Tom Brady Beat NFL Suspension

3 Cargo Shipping Scams to Avoid