The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) recently released their 2024 report, breaking down $16.6 billion in losses from over 859,500 complaints.
On April 23, 2025 the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released their annual report for 2024. Every year, the IC3 reports on the complaints they receive form the general public on cyber crimes and provides analysis, identifying categories and sharing their predictions for the next year’s trends in internet crime. The IC3, founded in 2000, has received more than 9 million complaints since being founded, and now receives a daily average of 2,000 complaints. By sorting through this mountain of reports, the document helps the FBI connect with industry partners and disseminate important information to the public.
This year’s report was based on more than 859,500 complaints, with the reported losses totalling $16.6 billion (a third more than the 2023 report exposed). Almost 30% of the complaints included actual loss, with the average loss being $19,372. There were important variances in loss across age groups and different crime types. Still, almost 83% of all reported losses were the result of cyber-enabled fraud. Call center scams, gold courier scams, emergency scams, and toll scams are trending examples of cyber-enabled fraud.
Crime Types
The five most reported crimes were phishing/spoofing (193,407), extortion (86,415), personal data breach (64,882), non-payment/non-delivery (49,572), and investment (47,919). An alarming 149,686 of all complaints were cryptocurrency-related crimes. The most expensive crimes were investment ($6.5 billion in losses), business email compromise ($2.7 billion in losses), tech support ($1.5 billion in losses), personal data breach ($1.5 billion in losses), and non-payment/non-delivery ($785 million in losses). This year, non-payment/non-delivery scams overtook confidence/romance scams in the top five expensive crimes - but the expense of confidence/romance crimes still increased slightly (3%) from 2023.
Cyber Threats
In 2024, the IC3 collected more than 4,800 complaints from critical infrastructure organizations that experienced a cyber threat, with the most reported threats being ransomware and data breaches. There were 67 new ransomware variants detected in 2024, including FOG, Lynx, Cicada 3301, Dragonforce, and Frag. The ransomware variants that featured most frequently in this year’s complaints were Akira, LockBit, RansomHub, FOG and PLAY. While the FBI did successfully disrupt LockBit in a global operation in February 2024, the group is still being pursued in an investigation that has recently located Russian servers being used by LockBit affiliates.
Besides the LockBit disruption, the IC3 report shares other success stories from the FBI’s missions combatting cyber crime. Operation Level Up alerted 4,323 victims of cryptocurrency investment fraud of their situation, with 76% of them being unaware that they were being taken advantage of. The FBI referred 42 victims to their specialists for suicide intervention, and estimates they saved victims over $285 million. The FBI also took down the main Warzone site and three related domains where cybercriminals could purchase the Warzone RAT malware. The malware allowed threat actors to look through victim file systems, steal log in information, and even watch victims through web cams.
Complaints Distribution
In the United States, California, Texas, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania sent in the most complaints to the IC3. The list of states that weathered the most in losses is pretty similar: California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Illinois. While the majority of complaints the IC3 collects come from the United States, the organization received complaints from all over the world in 2024. The five foreign countries with the most crime reports were the United Kingdom, Canada, India, France, and the Philippines.
While the 2024 IC3 report shows how cybercrime continues to grow and steal from vulnerable populations, it also shows that the FBI is working to help victims and stop cybercriminals. The current Director of the FBI, Kash Patel, emphasized the importance of sending in complaints on Internet crimes in the report’s press release: “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. The IC3, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, is only as successful as the reports it receives; that’s why it’s imperative that the public immediately report suspected cyber-enabled criminal activity to the FBI.”
If you think you’re the victim of an internet crime, you can submit a complaint through the IC3 website, www.ic3.gov, and alert the relevant financial institutions, your local FBI field office and law enforcement. Even if there isn’t an immediate answer, your report can help investigators IC3 identify the trends and identify solutions for people who are in the same boat.