FBI says online scams raked in $16.6 billion last year

Cybercriminals and online scammers stole a record $16.6 billion last year, the FBI said Wednesday.

The figure, from the FBI’s annual Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report, is a sharp rise from the $12.5 billion reported in 2023, reflecting the increased prevalence of online scams, particularly ones including cryptocurrency and those targeting older Americans.

While the report is a leading look at how the United States is ravaged by cybercrime, its numbers are an undercount, as it only reflects people who take the time to file a report with the agency. The agency received 859,532 total complaints of scams and cybercrime last year.

“It’s hard to have numbers tell the full story of what might be occurring across the cybercriminal ecosystem,” Deputy Assistant Director Cynthia Kaiser said in a press call previewing the report.

“Since 2020, the virtualization of everything in our lives has increased the attack surface, and we’ve seen criminals move from the physical to the digital world,” she said.

More than a quarter-million people reported actual financial loss from scams and cybercrime, the report said.

Fake toll scams, in which people frequently get text messages telling them to pay a small fee, prompted 58,271 complaints and $129,624 in reported losses. As NBC News reported in March, at least some of those scams are tied to a Chinese-speaking cybercriminal syndicate that has advertised on Telegram.

The biggest scam victims were by far people 60 and older, who reported more than $4.8 billion lost. Older victims were also the most likely to say that cryptocurrency was involved in a scam that targeted them — complaints referencing cryptocurrency accounted for $2.8 billion among that age group.

People older than 60 lost the most money — $1.8 billion — in investment scams, a category that the FBI uses to include so-called “pig butchering” scams.

Pig butchering scams often start with an innocuous or confusing text message from a stranger, which cybercriminals use as an opening to eventually build a relationship with a victim by pretending to be a friend or romantic partner. They slowly convince them to invest more and more money into a fake cryptocurrency venture and have led to tragic stories where some retirees lose their entire savings.

Money reported lost to investment scams has rapidly increased in recent years, jumping from $3.3 billion in 2022 to $4.6 billion in 2023 and $6.6 billion last year, the report said.