Over $10 billion in losses from online scams were reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in 2022—the highest number in the last five years. Over 480,000 Americans suffered financial losses.
Though the number of impacted scam victims increased only moderately (13,000 up from 2021), the accumulated financial losses expanded by $3 billion.
According to the latest FBI Internet Crime Report, the jump is mainly due to a 180 percent increase in cryptocurrency investment fraud ($2.57 billion). Non-crypto investment scam losses were $740 million, a slight increase from the previous year.
The IC3 received 21,832 “business email compromise” (BEC) complaints in 2022, accounting for more than $2.7 billion in losses. BEC is a sophisticated scam that targets businesses and individuals performing financial transactions by compromising legitimate business email accounts….