In its latest report, reflecting on 2025, the IC3 finds that the amount of money lost to such crimes continues to climb — as it has done at a fairly steady clip since 2015. Last year saw $20.9 billion lost to such crime, a 26 percent increase over the $16.6 billion lost in 2024.
The sheer number of cyber-related crimes reported each year has risen rapidly, from about 288,000 in the mid-2010s to 791,000 at the end of that decade. And the trend continues, with 2025 seeing more than 1 million reported crimes.
Here’s what the report found:
- Investment fraud was the most costly crime in 2025, accounting for $8.6 billion in losses. This category covers a wide range of scams that trick victims into investing based on false information. But the most prevalent, and most costly, was cryptocurrency investment fraud, responsible for $7.2 billion in losses.
- Perpetrators of cryptocurrency investment fraud are often human trafficking victims in Southeast Asia forced to run scam operations. The scammers contact people online through methods like social media, dating apps or texts and, ultimately, persuade them to send cryptocurrency to fake investment platforms or apps.
- Minors are increasingly being targeted by cyber crimes including online grooming, cyber bullying and sextortion. In the latter, criminals trick victims into sharing intimate photos or videos then threaten either to publish the photos or hurt the child if they don’t comply with demands, typically to send money or send more photos. About 17.6 percent of sextortion cases in 2025 targeted people under 20 years old.
- Ransomware continues to be a major problem for “critical infrastructure” sectors — that is, sectors deemed essential to the U.S. economic security, national security and/or public health and safety. The most targeted of these sectors in 2025 were health care and public health, critical manufacturing, financial services, government facilities and IT.
- Unsurprisingly, the most populous states — California, Texas, Florida and New York — reported the most cyber-enabled crimes and greatest financial losses to such crime. But when drilling down to complaints per 100,000 citizens, Washington, D.C., Alaska, Nevada and Arizona topped the list.
- IC3 also helps respond to cyber crime, in part by alerting law enforcement to recurring crimes for investigation and alerting financial institutions to reported fraudulent transactions. In 2025, the team was able to help Portland recover a $6.7 million contractor payment sent to a fraudster. The scammer had managed to change payment system details to direct the payment to a bank account they owned. The FBI obtained a warrant and was able to seize the funds before the scammer moved them out of the bank account.
