The News: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently published its FBI 2022 Internet Crime Report which was compiled from 800,944 complaints of suspected internet crime reported to the agency’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) last year. The IC3 serves as a public resource to submit reports of cyberattacks and incidents. Read more from the FBI 2022 Internet Crime Report.
FBI 2022 Internet Crime Report Made Public by Internet Crime Complaint Center
Analyst Take: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently made public its FBI 2022 Internet Crime Report which was compiled from 800,944 complaints of suspected internet crime reported to the agency’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) last year.
The IC3 serves as a public resource to submit reports of cyberattacks and incidents. According to the FBI 2022 report, the potential total financial damages as a result of cybercrime in 2022 increased from $6.9 billion in 2021 to roughly $10.2 billion, with a slight reduction in the number of complaints made to the FBI. For the first time, investment scams took over business email compromise as the most reported cybercrime.
Similar to last year, according to the FBI 2022 Internet Crime Report, the top four internet crimes reported by victims in 2022, were investment fraud, business email compromise (BEC), ransomware, and call center fraud. Here’s a look at some specifics:
Investment Fraud. In 2022, investment scams were the costliest scheme reported to the IC3. Investment fraud complaints increased from $1.45 billion in 2021 to $3.31 billion in 2022, an increase of 127%. Within those complaints, cryptocurrency investment fraud rose from $907 million in 2021 to $2.57 billion in 2022, an increase of 183%. According to the report, the most targeted age group reporting this type of cryptocurrency scam are victims ages 30 to 49. Crypto-investment scams reported included:
- Liquidity mining
- Hacked social media
- Celebrity Impersonation
- Real Estate Professionals
- Employment
Business email compromise (BEC). In 2022, the IC3 received 21,832 business email compromise complaints with more than $2.7 billion in adjusted damages. Yikes! BEC scams have evolved from simple hacking or spoofing of business and personal email accounts and a request to send wire payments to fraudulent bank accounts. Scammers are frequently utilizing custodial accounts held at financial institutions for cryptocurrency exchanges, or having victims send funds directly to cryptocurrency platforms where funds are quickly dispersed. The report also indicates an increase in the tactic of spoofing legitimate business phone numbers to confirm fraudulent banking details with victims.
Ransomware. According to the report, the IC3 received 2,385 complaints identified as ransomware with adjusted losses of more than $34.3 million. While cyber criminals use a variety of techniques to infect victims with ransomware, phishing emails, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) exploitation, and exploitation of software vulnerabilities remained the top initial infection vectors for ransomware incidents reported to the IC3. It has been challenging for the FBI to ascertain the true number of ransomware victims as many infections go unreported to law enforcement.
Call Center Fraud. Two categories of call center fraud reported to the IC3, Tech/Customer Support and Government Impersonation, are responsible for over $1 billion in losses to victims. Call centers most frequently target the elderly, with almost half the victims reporting to be over 60 (46%) and experiencing 69% of the losses (over $724 million). The FBI report noted Tech/Customer Support incident reports had a 132% increase, while Government impersonation had a 68% increase.
According to the FBI 2022 Internet Crime Report, the IC3’s Recovery Asset Team (RAT), initiated the Financial Fraud Kill Chain (FFKC) — I’ll take an acronym for $50, Alex — on 2,838 BEC complaints involving domestic-to-domestic transactions with potential losses of over $590 million. RATA placed a monetary hold on approximately $433 million, representing a 73 percent success rate and RAT saw a 64 percent increase in FFKCs initiation compared to 2021.
Wrapping up, it’s a given that cybercrime will continue to accelerate as bad actors get more sophisticated in their tactics. While suspected cybercrime complaints decreased marginally from their peak of 847,376 in 2021 to 800,944 in 2022, the losses increased by over $3 billion during that same period. And this number isn’t a ‘real’ number, as there are many cybercrime incidents that go unreported.
The threat posed by cybercriminals is real, it’s growing, and there’s no reason to think it will abate any time soon. That means that it’s incumbent upon businesses and leaders to understand the dangers they face and to leverage technology solutions that can help detect threats and mitigate the risks posed by fraud, email compromise, and ransomware.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.
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Author Information
Shelly Kramer is a serial entrepreneur with a technology-centric focus. She has worked alongside some of the world’s largest brands to embrace disruption and spur innovation, understand and address the realities of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of digital transformation.
