The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released its annual Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) Report, reflecting complaints received throughout 2025. The report provides a comprehensive look at cyber-related crime trends, losses and emerging risks impacting clients and financial institutions alike.
There are a variety of reports available for review, including:
Our team is tracking data in the overall annual report to identify patterns and trends from 2015 to date. At a high-level look, fraud complaints increased in 2025 (1,008,597) compared to 2024 (859,532). At the same time, overall fraud losses rose in 2025 ($2.9 billion) compared to 2024 ($16.6 billion). Most of the top categories from previous years saw increases, reinforcing the importance of financial institutions understanding what the 2025 data reveals.
Let’s look at the FBI IC3’s top 2025 categories:
Investment
- 72,984 complaints in 2025 (up 52% from 2024) with $8.6 billion in losses (up 32% from 2024).
Business Email Compromise
- 24,768 complaints (up 16% from 2024) with $3 billion in losses (up 10% from 2024).
Tech/Customer Support
- 47,794 complaints (up 33% from 2024) with $2.1 billion in losses (up 46% from 2024).
Personal Data Breach
- 67,456 complaints (up 4% from 2024) with $1.3 billion in losses (down 10% from 2024).
Confidence/Romance
- 23,159 complaints (up 29% from 2024) with $929 million in losses (up 38% from 2024).
Government Impersonation
- 32,424 complaints (up 87% from 2024) with $798 million in losses (up 97% from 2024).
Across many of these categories, IC3 complaints involve the use of cryptocurrency, particularly in investment and romance scams, extortion and impersonation schemes. In total, cryptocurrency was involved in 181,565 complaints (up 21% from 2024) with losses reaching $11.4 billion (up 22% from 2024).
Other key takeaways from the report:
- Compliant Volume Trends: Phishing/spoofing and extortion ranked #1 and #2, with 191,561 and 89,129 complaints filed. Non-Payment/Non-Delivery followed at #4 with 56,478 complaints. While these categories don’t drive the highest financial losses, they remain persistent and disruptive for account holders. Identity theft also remains a concern, ranking #8 with 31,675 complaints. Otherwise, the top number of complaint trends match the financial loss graphs seen above.
- Geographic Impact: More populous states reported the highest number of complaints and losses, including California, Texas, Florida and New York. Within EPCOR’s footprint, Illinois (#5), Pennsylvania (#6) and Ohio (#8) ranked in the top 10 for total complaints. Pennsylvania (#7) and Illinois (#8) also ranked in the top 10 for total financial losses.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trends: As a newly tracked category, complaints involving AI totaled 22,364, with $893 million in losses across multiple fraud types. According to the FBI, investment, extortion and personal data breaches were the primary categories where AI was involved.
- Increasing Elder Fraud: There were 201,266 complaints involving individuals age 60 and older (up 37% from 2024) with $7.7 billion in losses (up 59% from 2024), resulting in an average loss of $38,500. These cases most often involve phishing/spoofing, tech/customer support, investment, personal data breach, confidence/romance, non-payment/non-delivery, extortion and government impersonation. The FBI also reports that individuals age 60 or older are frequent targets of business email compromise (BEC) scams and represent the largest age group impacted by cryptocurrency-related complaints, with 44,555 complaints totaling $4.4 billion in losses.
Cryptocurrency-Related Fraud: About 33% of complaints involve investment scams, while extortion accounted for 13%. Other common categories included tech/customer support, personal data breach, employment and phishing/spoofing. Losses followed a similar pattern, with particularly high impacts in government impersonation schemes. Investment scams led with $7.2 billion in losses, followed by 1.2 billion for tech/customer support and $939 million for personal data breaches involving cryptocurrency.
To file a report for a cyber-related crime, visit the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
This is an unnerving 2025 report, with significant increases in IC3 complaints across most categories. As fraud continues to rise, consider using these resources to better understand emerging threats and strengthen your fraud prevention efforts heading into 2026:
The FBI’s 2025 IC3 data makes one thing clear: fraud is accelerating in both scale and complexity. Staying informed, prepared and proactive will be critical as you work to protect your organization and keep your clients safe and informed.
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