FBI 2024 Fraud Statistics: UP, UP, and AWAY!

In April 2025, the FBI released its annual Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) fraud report. To no one’s surprise, the losses in 2024 grew. It is at $16.6 billion, up 33% from 2023. For the past five years, IC3 has reported $50.5 billion in cumulative losses. And that total is just for crimes reported by consumers and businesses.

What is most interesting is how cleanly the IC3 breaks out the fraud data for analysis. So, let’s unpack this report. Chart 1 contains the crime type categories by dollars lost.

Chart 1: Crime Type Categories by Dollars Lost

Investment scams, at $6.6 billion have shot to the top, almost doubled since 2022. Business Email Compromises (BEC) have leveled off for the past three years at $2.8 billion, but still high given this fraud category began around 2011. Companies just don’t learn.

Tech Support scams are up $500 million since 2023 to $1.464 billion and have risen almost 87% since 2022.

Confidence Fraud/Romance is up slightly since 2023 but down 9% since 2022. This is probably down, with the big increase in pig butchering (a combination of romance and investment) probably included under investment fraud.

A few other interesting loss numbers:

• Cryptocurrency was involved in $9.3 billion of the $16.6 billion total losses (56%). This was mainly in BEC and investment scams and some Confidence/Romance and Tech Support scams. In 2023, cryptocurrency was involved in 3.8 billion. So, there has been a 250% increase in the use of cryptocurrency in 2024.
• 60+ (elderly) fraud losses were $4.8 billion (more on this later)

• Gold courier scams had $219 million in losses. This is where scammers use couriers to pick up cash and gold from customers under one of many ruses. This is happening across the country. Here is a story in April 2025. “Two men were arrested for their involvement in ‘courier scams’ in Maryland, resulting in victims losing over $700,000.” In San Diego, CA, police have arrested many couriers for picking up gold and cash from victims, according to the San Diego District Attorney’s office.

• Call center scams were up to $1.9 billion in losses. This was mainly in tech support and cryptocurrency exchange situations.
• Average loss was $19,372.

Every age group is getting scammed. This is consistent with some recent information I received from a US bank which confirmed that all age segments are successfully being attacked by the scammers. The additional point they made was the vast majority of the losses were suffered by the elderly.

Chart 2 shows the numbers of scams and dollar losses by age group. You can see in the chart the number of reported incidents was fairly evenly spilt between the age groups. The last three age groups suffer the most because that is where more wealth has been built up.

Chart 2: Numbers of Scams and Dollar Losses

This year the FBI IC3 report has a special section on elderly fraud losses. It is important that the report has a special section on elderly fraud losses, as the losses per incident are much higher for the elderly and they have no time or ability to recoup these losses. These losses can be financially and emotionally devastating. The key elderly loss statistics are in Chart 3.

Chart 3: Key Elderly Statistics

The elderly lost $4.9 billion in 2023. The average reported loss for the elderly is now $83,000. These may be the most important statistics in this report. And 7500 complainants lost over $100,000. Also, there was a 43% increase in losses from 2023 for the elderly. This is a very disturbing trend.

In another section of the report, there is more breakdown of top elderly dollar losses by crime types: Investment losses for elderly were $1.8 billion, Tech Support was $900 million, Confidence/Romance was almost $400 million and government impersonation over $200 million. Cryptocurrency was involved in $2.8 billion of the fraud (58%).

It is exciting to see the newly established National Elder Fraud Coordination Center (NEFCC) open this month, just as the IC3 report was released. One of the primary goals of the NEFCC is to bring the criminals who attack the elderly to justice. Watch for important results as this year unfolds.

When the fraudsters commit the fraud/scams, there are several key ways the money moves. Chart 4 shows this.

Chart 4: Top Ways Funds Are Lost in Fraud

Notice how cryptocurrency and wire transfers lead the money outflow, with cryptocurrency the number one way. Some states are now limiting the daily crypto ATM deposit limit to $1000. This daily limit should be law in every state. Also, these statistics put financial institutions on call to add strong controls to prevent money mules. This includes strengthening account opening controls and having inbound transaction monitoring.

The report also breaks out losses by state. Chart 5 shows the top states by complaints and number of losses.

Chart 5: Top States by Complaints and Number of Losses

With the slow death of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), I think these state fraud loss numbers could become the catalyst for states to take action to require scam prevention from banks, telcos and digital platforms to help protect their constituents. Certainly, California and New York, two states with strong legislatures and existing strong consumer laws, could step up to help protect their constituents. In fact, in March, the California Senate held a hearing on Consumer Scams.

The 2024 Report also included several techniques the FBI deploys to recover losses and to prevent losses. The first technique is the Financial Fraud Kill Chain. According to the report: “the IC3 Recovery Asset Team streamlines communications with financial institutions and FBI field offices to assist in the freezing of funds for victims of fraudulent domestic and international transactions via the Financial Fraud Kill Chain. Most Financial Fraud Kill Chain incidents initiated by the IC3 RAT are Business Email Compromise (BEC). The Financial Fraud Kill Chain can also be initiated for Tech Support Fraud, Romance Scams, and Data Breaches.” Chart 6 show a five-year history of the Financial Fraud Kill Chain

Chart 6: Financial Fraud Kill Chain (5 Years)

The second technique is Operation Level Up. The report says: “Launched in January 2024, Operation Level identified victims of cryptocurrency investment fraud and notified them of the scam. Operation Level Up notifies victims while the scam is in process. The operation was initiated with the support of agents from FBI and the U.S. Secret Service.” This primarily has involved crypto currency investment frauds, known as pig butchering. Below are the results:

The third technique involved shutting down scam call centers. The report went on to say: “Since 2022, the DOJ, FBI, and IC3 have collaborated with law enforcement in India, such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in New Delhi and local Indian states, to combat cyber-enabled financial crimes and transnational call center fraud.” The success of this technique is shown below:

Unfortunately, many of the very large scam call center/compounds are in lawless Myanmar and will be difficult to shut down. China has had limited success shutting down some scam compounds in Myanmar. Other scam compounds are located in Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, parts of the Middle East and Latin America.

Conclusion

The FBI IC3 2024 Internet Crime Report echoes what we saw in the recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) 2024 Sentinel Report. Both reports showed about a 25–33% increase in fraud from 2023. The dollar range between the two reports is $12.5–$16.6 in annual reported fraud.

Perhaps the most disturbing statistics were from the elderly age group.

• $4.9 billion lost
• Average loss was $83,000
• 43% increase in losses from 2023

We definitely need to provide better protection for the elderly to prevent these crimes.

Use of cryptocurrency in the reported losses exploded from $3.8 billion in 2023 to $9.3 billion in 2024. This is a 250% increase in 2024. And the largest age group with cryptocurrency losses was the elderly at $2.8 billion.

Since maybe only 5–10% of fraud losses are reported, we can estimate total fraud losses at $150–200 billion per year in the US. These are stunning numbers!

Even with these massive loss numbers, the US still has no national strategy to combat consumer scams, which make up a large portion of these losses. Why is a national strategy/attack plan so crucial? Because the scammers are no longer just individuals. It is transnational organized crime attacking individual consumers, picking them off one by one. The UN and Operation Shamrock have identified massive scam compounds in Southeast East Asia (and elsewhere) with hundreds of thousands of scammers with the sole focus of stealing money from consumers in almost every country in the world.

There is another ominous threat for the US. With several English-speaking countries actively deploying scam prevention controls (the UK, Australia and New Zealand), the scammers will put more emphasis on the US, a country that has no requirements for scam controls or money mule controls. So, expect the numbers to grow in 2025.

There are, however, two potential bright spots in the US. In April 2025, the National Elder Fraud Coordination Center (NEFCC) opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. CEO Brady Finta, former FBI Supervisory Special Agent, is putting together a team to work with law enforcement and private sector companies to help aggregate elder Individual fraud cases into large cases and go after the criminals. This is patterned after the successful San Diego Elder Justice Task Force.

The second initiative is the Aspen Institute National Task Force for Fraud & Scam Prevention. This task force includes financial institutions, digital platforms, telcos, consumer non-profits and the US government. The goal of this task force is to define actionable solutions to prevent fraud and scams in the US. These solutions will be announced in Q4 2025.

But now, US financial institutions, where the money leaves the scam victim accounts, need to do more. They should follow the lead of the UK, Australian and New Zealand bankers and add a scam strategy with scam controls and money mule controls. Digital platforms that operate in the US need to add the same controls they are already deploying in the UK and Australia. Telcos need to do more to block international scam calls and to block scam text messages. We continue to see a more aggressive telco response in the UK, Europe and Australia.

Also, more states should have laws that 1) allow banks to hold suspicious transactions involving elderly customers with a safe harbor for banks and 2) have daily limits on crypto ATM deposits and 3) require elderly bank customers to name a “trusted person” for banks to notify for suspicious transactions.

We can make a difference in the US, but it requires a whole-of-ecosystem response with individual entities and government committed to actional solutions to fight these scams.