Cybercriminals and online crooks stole a record of $ 16.6 billion last year, the FBI announced on Wednesday.
The figure, from the annual report of the annual center on crime complaints on the Internet of the FBI (IC3), is a strong increase compared to the 12.5 billion dollars reported in 2023, reflecting the increased prevalence of online scams, in particular those, including cryptocurrency and these targeting older Americans.
Although the report is an overview of how the United States is ravaged by cybercrime, its figures are a sub-account, because it only reflects people who take the time to report to the agency. The agency received 859,532 total complaints of scams and cybercrime last year.
“It is difficult to see figures tell the whole story of what could happen through the cybercriminal ecosystem,” said assistant director Cynthia Kaiser in a press call by previewing the report.
“Since 2020, the virtualization of everything in our lives has increased the attack surface, and we have seen criminals going from the physical world to the digital world,” she said.
More than a quarter of a million people have declared a real financial loss of scams and cybercrime, according to the report.
The false toll scams, in which people frequently receive SMS telling them to pay a modest sum, prompted 58,271 complaints and $ 129,624 in reported losses. As NBC News reported in March, at least some of these scams are linked to a Chinese cybercriminal union which announced the telegram.
The greatest victims of scams were by far people aged 60 and over, who reported more than $ 4.8 billion lost. The older victims were also the most likely to say that cryptocurrency was involved in a scam that targeted them-complaints referring to cryptocurrency represented $ 2.8 billion among this age group.
People over the age of 60 have lost the most money – $ 1.8 billion – in investment scams, a category that the FBI uses to include so -called “pork butcher” scams.
Pork butcher’s scams often start with a harmless or confusing text message from a foreigner, which cybercriminals use as opening to possibly build a relationship with a victim by pretending to be a friend or a romantic partner. They slowly convince them to invest more and more money in a false cryptocurrency and have led to tragic stories where some retirees lose their entire economy.
The money declared lost to investment scams has quickly increased in recent years, going from $ 3.3 billion in 2022 to $ 4.6 billion in 2023 and $ 6.6 billion last year, report.
