April 23 (UPI) — Phishing/spoofing, extortion and personal data breaches were the top three cybercrimes in 2024 that saw a dramatic spike last year in losses for U.S. consumers to the tune of billions, according to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s latest annual report.
“Reporting is one of the first and most important steps in fighting crime so law enforcement can use this information to combat a variety of frauds and scams,” FBI Director Kash Patel said Wednesday in a release on the bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center’s (IC3) annual report detailing last year’s reported Internet crimes in the United States.
It said nearly 860,000 complaints of suspected Internet crimes detailed reported losses that exceeded $16 billion, which was a 33% increase in financial losses from 2023, in sharp contrast to the $7 billion loss for Americans at its own 7% spike from 2021 in a report unveiled nearly three years ago.
The IC3, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and houses some nine million public complaints in its databases, “is only as successful as the reports it receives,” Patel added.
Meanwhile, victims of cryptocurrency investment fraud reported more than $6.5 billion in losses.
“These rising losses are even more concerning because last year, the FBI took significant actions to make it harder, and more costly, for malicious actors to succeed,” B. Chad Yarbrough, the FBI’s criminal and cyber operations director, wrote in the report.
According to the 47-page report, California, Texas and Florida saw the most complaints in 2024 and people over 60 suffered greater losses at nearly $5 billion.
Interestingly, its lowest category of reported fraud came from the under age 20 category with only 17,993 reported complaints at $22.5 million in monetary loss.
The bureau’s annual report pointed to “confidence” and “romance” as its tenth ranking cause of Internet fraud.
This month, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that a 42-year-old Georgia man will spend the next two years in prison for his role in a romance scheme that stole thousands of dollars from elderly victims in Missouri, New Jersey and Minnesota.
It listed “government impersonation” at 11th ranking and credit card/check fraud as 12th for fraud.
“That’s why it’s imperative that the public immediately report suspected cyber-enabled criminal activity to the FBI,” says Patel.
In the report, Yarbrough points to “a serious blow” the FBI dealt to the Russian ransomware group LockBit.
Yarbrough says the FBI has avoided more than $800 million in fraudulent payments by “offering up thousands of decryption keys to victims of ransomware” since 2022.
FBI officials, meanwhile, still encourage Americans who think they’ve been victim to any cyber-enabled crime to file a complaint through the IC3 website, to contact the nearest FBI field office or local law enforcement.
“The more comprehensive complaints the FBI receives, the more effective it will be in helping law enforcement gain a more accurate picture of the extent and nature of internet-facilitated crimes,” they stated.