FBI Reports Cybercrime Complaints Have Doubled in the Last 14 Months

According to the FBI, there has been a sharp increase in cybercrime complaints between March 2020 and May 2021, with the number of reports rising by more than one million during this period.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) began recording cybercrime complaints in 2000. It took experts seven years to reach the milestone of one million complaints in a single year. Since then, it has typically taken an average of 29.5 months to add each additional million complaints. The recent surge, however, is unprecedented.

The FBI attributes this spike to the shift toward remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, which criminals have exploited for targeted attacks. The FBI report states:

“In 2020, while the American public focused on protecting their families from a global pandemic and helping those in need, cybercriminals took advantage of our increased reliance on technology. They used phishing, spoofing, extortion, and various types of online fraud to target the most vulnerable members of our society: healthcare workers seeking personal protective equipment, families searching for information about benefits to pay their bills, and more.”

Most Common Types of Cybercrimes in 2020

Law enforcement officials report that the three most common types of cybercrimes recorded in 2020 were:

• Phishing
• Payment and delivery fraud
• Extortion

Biggest Financial Losses

Despite the frequency of these crimes, the largest financial losses were caused by:

• Email Account Compromise (EAC) and Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, resulting in $1.8 billion in losses
• Romance scams, with $600 million in losses
• Investment fraud, totaling $336 million in losses