Acoru secures €10M to disrupt money mule activity and predict financial scams

Madrid-based Acoru, which develops technology to prevent AI-enabled fraud and money laundering, has raised a €10 million Series A led by 33N Ventures, with participation from existing investors Adara Ventures and Athos Capital.

Generative AI–enabled schemes, deepfakes, voice cloning, and social engineering are driving up fraud losses, with global fraud and bank scams estimated at nearly $500 billion annually. Most existing tools are not designed to detect Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud or capture intent signals, focusing instead on transactions, events, and sessions.

Founded in December 2023 by cybersecurity veterans Pablo de la Riva Ferrezuelo and David Morán, Acoru addresses this gap with its Account Monitoring Platform. The platform classifies both first-party and counterparty accounts to predict APP fraud, prevent scams, and reduce losses, aligning with new regulations on shared scam reimbursements and enhanced reporting.

Built by experienced fraud fighters and centred on intent and network behaviour, the platform links pre-fraud signals with context across channels within a bank and, via the Acoru Consortium, across participating institutions. It continuously monitors accounts and their counterparties, building evolving risk profiles to flag patterns such as clusters of micro-transactions or unusual interaction behaviours indicative of AI-driven automation.

This enables fraud and financial crime teams to intervene early: blocking suspicious activity in victim and unwitting mule accounts, and freezing complicit mule and money-laundering accounts before funds move.

Pablo de la Riva Ferrezuelo, CEO and co-founder of Acoru, said: 

Scammers today have more powerful tools at their disposal than ever before. Our approach predicts future victims, money mules and accounts at risk of being laundered by detecting the earliest warning signals others can’t see. With our innovative consortium model, banks can finally exchange account classifications through a centralised network that creates a truly collective defence. This is a paradigm shift in how fraud is fought.

The new funding will enable Acoru to advance its mission of helping banks predict and prevent AI-driven fraud and money laundering before transactions occur.