In a sharp rise in cybercrime losses, Americans lost nearly $21 billion in 2025, marking a 26% increase from $16.6 billion in 2024, according to the FBI.
The surge was driven by investment scams, business email compromise, tech support fraud, and data breaches. Complaints filed with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) crossed 1 million, up from 859,000 the previous year.
Phishing attacks led the volume of complaints with 191,000 cases, followed by extortion (89,000) and investment scams (72,000). Other serious threats included business email compromise (24,700 cases), data breaches (3,900), ransomware (3,600), and SIM swapping (971).
Investment fraud alone accounted for 49% of all scam-related incidents, causing losses of $8.6 billion. However, cryptocurrency-related cybercrime resulted in the highest losses, exceeding $11 billion across 181,565 cases.
Cyber-enabled fraud featured in 453,000 complaints and contributed $17.7 billion to total losses. Americans aged 60 and above were the most affected group, losing $7.7 billion, a 37% increase year-on-year.
For the first time, the FBI report included AI-driven scams, which led to 22,300 complaints and $893 million in losses. These scams involved voice cloning, deepfake videos, fake profiles, and forged documents.
Critical infrastructure sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, IT, and government facilities were also targeted. In 2 cases involving dams and nuclear facilities, the incidents were classified as data breaches.
The FBI has stepped up its response, launching 3,900 Financial Fraud Kill Chain (FFKC) interventions in 2025. Out of $1.16 billion targeted by fraudsters, $679 million was successfully frozen.
Through initiatives like “Operation Level Up,” the agency also alerted victims of cryptocurrency scams. Of the 3,780 individuals notified, 78% were unaware they were being targeted.
The FBI advises individuals to avoid acting on urgent requests, verify communications carefully, and report suspected fraud to ic3.gov.
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