According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Americans were defrauded of approximately $21 billion through online crimes last year, mainly through investment schemes, compromised business emails, fake tech support, and data leaks.

This amount represents a 26% increase from 2024, continuing an upward trend, when U.S. citizens lost $16.6 billion to cyber offenses.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) also reported a similar rise in complaints, exceeding 1 million last year compared to 859,000 the previous year.

The most common issues reported involved phishing scams (191,000), blackmail attempts (89,000), and investment scams (72,000), which accounted for the largest financial losses.

While less frequent, there were still noteworthy reports of serious incidents like business email breaches (24,700 cases), data security incidents (3,900), ransomware attacks (3,600), and SIM swapping scams (971).

Investment scams were linked to 49% of all fraudulent cases last year, with associated losses of $8.6 billion. However, digital currency-related cybercrime produced the greatest loss, exceeding $11 billion across 181,565 cases.

Online fraud was noted in 453,000 complaints and accounted for $17.7 billion of the overall losses reported to the IC3 in 2025.

The IC3 reported that individuals over 60 years old were affected most severely, with losses totaling $7.7 billion, a 37% increase from the year prior.

For the first time, the FBI’s report included scams using AI, attributing 22,300 complaints and $893 million in losses to such incidents. These scams included voice replication, fake online personas, falsified identities, and deepfake videos.

In two instances, attacks on important infrastructure (dams and nuclear facilities) were categorized by the FBI as information breaches.

The most frequently targeted essential sectors during 2025 were healthcare, production, banking, information technology, and governmental agencies.

The FBI has stated that they have ramped up their efforts to prevent attacks, inform those affected, and freeze fraudulently obtained funds, and have sometimes even been able to recover losses.

In 2025, the agency initiated 3,900 Financial Fraud Kill Chain (FFKC) actions, successfully halting some deceptive activities. Of the $1.16 billion targeted by offenders, the FBI stopped $679 million.

To curtail cyber offenses, the agency also initiated ‘Operation Level Up‘ at the beginning of the year, a program intended to prevent financial harm by identifying and warning those being victimized by fraudulent online currency investments.

Of the 3,780 individuals who received alerts last year, 78% were unaware that they were being targeted.

The FBI suggests that the public respond calmly to urgent requests or pressure tactics, and carefully verify the legitimacy of a message before divulging personal information or assets.

Individuals who believe they may have been targeted by hackers or scam artists are encouraged to report the incidents with detailed information to ic3.gov.