Cybercrime Losses Hit a New Record in 2025
Financial losses tied to cybercrime reached almost $20.9 billion in 2025, marking a 26% increase over 2024, according to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) annual report released Tuesday. The figures paint a troubling picture of an accelerating threat landscape where digital criminals are becoming more prolific and more profitable with each passing year.
Zooming out, the growth rate is even more alarming. Total annual cybercrime losses have climbed nearly 400% since 2020, when they stood at $4.2 billion. Cumulative losses across that five-year window have now surpassed $71.3 billion, underscoring just how deeply cybercrime has embedded itself into the modern economy.
IC3 Fielding Nearly 3,000 Complaints Per Day
Established in 2000 as the nation's central repository for cybercrime reporting, the IC3 is operating at an unprecedented pace. Jose Perez, the FBI's operations director for its criminal and cyber branch, noted in the report:
"We now average almost 3,000 complaints per day."
In total, the FBI received more than 1 million complaints in 2025. It is worth noting, however, that these figures capture only the crimes that victims chose to report. An unknown number of incidents go unreported entirely, meaning the true scale of cybercrime's impact remains difficult to quantify.
Older Americans Disproportionately Targeted
Victims aged 60 and older bore an outsized share of the burden last year. This demographic filed 201,000 complaints with losses totaling nearly $7.75 billion — roughly 37% of all cybercrime-related losses recorded in 2025. Seniors reported both the largest volume of crimes and the highest total dollar losses of any age group.
Investment Fraud Remains the Costliest Category
Breaking down losses by crime type reveals investment-related fraud as the single most damaging category, accounting for almost $8.65 billion. The top three categories were:
- Investment fraud: nearly $8.65 billion
- Business email compromise (BEC): almost $3.05 billion
- Tech support scams: more than $2.1 billion
Cryptocurrency served as the primary payment mechanism for fraud linked to investment schemes and tech support scams, while wire transfers dominated as the preferred method for business email compromise losses.
Most Commonly Reported Crime Types
By volume of complaints rather than dollar losses, phishing ranked as the most frequently reported cybercrime in 2025. It was followed by extortion, investment scams, and personal data breaches. The FBI logged losses of $122.5 million from extortion and $32.3 million from ransomware specifically.
Sextortion also registered as a significant concern, with more than 75,000 reports submitted to the IC3. Of those, over 5,700 submissions were referred to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Ransomware: Widespread Across All Critical Sectors
Ransomware continues to pose a systemic threat. The IC3 received more than 3,600 ransomware complaints in 2025, and the five most frequently reported variants were:
- Akira
- Qilin
- INC
- BianLian
- Play
Every one of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors reported ransomware attacks during the year. The most heavily targeted sectors included health care, manufacturing, financial services, government, and IT.
Looking at the broader cyber threat landscape reported to the IC3, the breakdown was as follows: data breaches accounted for 39%, ransomware for 36%, SIM swapping for 10%, malware for 9%, and botnets for 7%.
A Global Problem With a U.S. Center of Gravity
While the IC3 primarily collects complaints from U.S. residents and businesses, it also received submissions from individuals and organizations in more than 200 countries last year. Those international reports accounted for nearly $1.6 billion in total losses.
FBI Pushes Back Against the Tide
Despite the relentlessly rising numbers, FBI operations director Perez emphasized that the bureau is actively working to turn the tables on cybercriminals.
"The FBI continues to disrupt and deter malicious cyber actors — and shift the cost from victims to our adversaries."
He also issued a direct warning to the public about the road ahead:
"It has never been more important to be diligent with your cybersecurity, social media footprint, and electronic interactions. Cyber threats and cyber-enabled crime will continue to evolve as the world embraces emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence."
The IC3 report serves as a critical, if incomplete, snapshot of the digital crime environment. With losses compounding year over year and criminal tactics growing more sophisticated, both individuals and organizations face mounting pressure to strengthen their defenses before they become the next statistic.
Source: CyberScoop