Online scammers have stolen a record $16.6 billion in 2024, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This figure, from the FBI’s annual Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report, is a striking rise when compared to the $12.5 billion reported in 2023.
This reveals the increasing prevalence of online scams, particularly those targeting the elderly. While this figure is startling, it is also an undercount, as it only includes cases where victims have filed a report. 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 quarter people reported actual financial loss due to scams and cybercrime.
READ: Indian American owner of technology staffing firm jailed for visa fraud (April 24, 2025)
“The criminals Americans face today may look different than in years past, but they still want the same thing: to harm Americans for their own benefit,” Chad Yarbrough, the FBI’s operations director for criminal and cyber, wrote in the report.
Phishing, data extortion and personal data breaches topped the list of cybercrime reports in 2024. Victims filed about 193,000 complaints about phishing, 86,000 reports about ransomware and data extortion schemes and nearly 65,000 reports about personal data breaches. However, investment scams, business email compromise and tech support scams resulted in the biggest losses for victims.
The FBI estimates people lost $6.5 billion to fake investment schemes, $2.7 billion to business email compromise and $1.4 billion to scammers posing as tech support agents. Complaints about ransomware also jumped 9% in 2024.
Victims of these scams often tend to be senior citizens, with more than 147,127 complaints being filed by people 60 and older. California, Texas and Florida led in number of complaints and amount of loss.