How Much Money Is Lost to Cybercrime?
In April, the FBI released its annual Internet Crime Report, evaluating all complaints logged via its Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). According to the Bureau's analysis, losses connected to cybercrime complaints were $12.5 billion in 2023, up $2 billion year-over-year and more than triple the amount recorded in 2019 despite the number of complaints less than doubling compared to four years prior. As our chart based on data provided in the report shows, reported cybercrime losses increased significantly from 2021 onwards.
While 2021 only saw a year-over-year increase of roughly $700 million lost even though complaints shot up, the jump in losses from 2021 to 2022 was decidedly more pronounced. This suggests criminals were able to illegally extract larger sums of money per breach.
Most funds were lost due to investment fraud and hacked business email addresses. These two attack vectors were connected to around 60 percent of all money reported stolen. Although these figures are already substantial, the actual numbers may be much higher due to the FBI only being able to analyze cases reported via its own platform.
The data also shows a clear bias in geographical distribution: 521,652 complaints were filed from the United States and 288,355 from the United Kingdom. Zooming in on U.S. cases, most complaints originated in California, Texas and Florida. The former also ranked first in terms of money lost with $2.1 billion or 17 percent of the reported worldwide total. Apart from the U.S. and the UK, the nations with the highest complaint prevalences were Canada (6,601), India (3,405) and Nigeria (1,779).