FBI Reports Huge Spike In Online Crime As Losses Reach Record $12.5B

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is the primary interface between the public and the U.S. government, to report cybercrime and collect information about cybersecurity threats. The IC3 recently published a paper outlining a significant increase in reports and losses throughout 2023. Furthermore, other stats show a worrying trend that will likely worsen as time passes.

The primary startling fact from the IC3 2023 Annual Report is that complaints are up 10% over 2022 with 880,418 reports logged and that losses are up 22% to a whopping $12.5 billion. Of course, these numbers, as noted in the report, are not quite representative of all cybercrime and could be considered a fairly conservative estimate of the actual, real-world total. This is evidenced by the compromise of Hive ransomware’s infrastructure, leading the IC3 team to find that only 20% of victims reported incidents, and that was for just one group.


The most affected age group appears to be those that are 60+, which has 101,068 reports and a total of $3.4 billion in reported losses. Overall, investment fraud scams were the largest component of cybercrime in 2023, but for the elderly, it would seem that they fell victim to tech support scams more often. Beyond this, business email compromise and ransomware were also some of the highlighted vectors, with the former contributing $2.9 billion in adjusted losses and the latter $59.6 million.

Overall, the fact that these sorts of scams are still tricking people, especially the elderly, is quite disappointing. It indicates that there is a need to train and educate those who might be at risk of falling victim to these sorts of crimes. However, there is also work to be done in the cybersecurity sector to shore up systems that lead to various types of compromise that contribute to significant losses.