Fraud and scam statistics are quoted everywhere, but many circulate without a source, a year or a definition, which makes them useless for a business case or a board paper. This guide collects the headline figures from official, recurring sources: the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), UK Finance, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the European Banking Authority and European Central Bank (EBA and ECB), and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Every figure gives its publisher, report and the period it covers. It is written for fraud leaders, security and risk teams, analysts and journalists who need numbers they can defend. Business email compromise has its own page, the Business Email Compromise and Fraud Statistics Guide, so it is only touched on here.
Last reviewed: November 2026.
Key takeaways
- Reported losses keep setting records. The IC3 recorded $20.877 billion in losses in 2025, up 26% on 2024, and the FTC recorded $15.9 billion, its sixth consecutive annual rise.
- Investment fraud is the largest single loss category. It accounts for $8.65 billion of IC3 losses and over $7.9 billion of FTC losses in 2025, and is the top loss type in Australia too.
- Older people lose the most per victim. IC3 complainants aged 60 and over reported $7.748 billion in 2025, with an average loss of $38,500.
- Scams are overtaking unauthorised fraud. In the UK, authorised push payment fraud rose 19% to £576.4 million in 2025, and in the EEA users bore about 85% of credit transfer fraud losses, mostly from scams.
- All of these numbers are floors. The FTC estimates the total cost of consumer fraud in 2024 could be as high as $195.9 billion, many times the reported figure.
Headline numbers by source
| Statistic | Figure | Source, report and period |
|---|---|---|
| Internet crime complaints | 1,008,597 | FBI IC3, Internet Crime Report 2025, calendar year 2025 |
| Internet crime losses | $20.877 billion (up 26% on 2024) | FBI IC3, Internet Crime Report 2025 |
| Consumer fraud reports | About 3 million (2.6 million in 2024) | FTC Consumer Sentinel Network, 2025, from FTC testimony of March 2026 |
| Consumer fraud losses | $15.9 billion (over $12 billion in 2024) | FTC Consumer Sentinel Network, 2025 |
| UK fraud losses (banking and finance) | £1,279.8 million across 4,062,198 cases | UK Finance, Annual Fraud Report 2026, 2025 data |
| Fraud incidents against adults in England and Wales | 4.5 million (up 11%) | ONS, Crime Survey for England and Wales, year ending June 2026 |
| EEA payment fraud | €4.2 billion (€3.5 billion in 2023) | EBA and ECB joint report on payment fraud, December 2025, 2024 data |
| Australian scam losses | A$2.18 billion across 481,523 reports | ACCC and National Anti-Scam Centre, March 2026 release, calendar year 2025 |
The sources measure different things. IC3 and FTC figures are self-reported complaints; UK Finance counts cases confirmed by its member banks; the ONS figure is a household survey estimate of incidents, including those never reported; the EBA and ECB figures come from payment service providers' regulatory returns. Do not add them together or compare them as if they were one series.
United States: IC3 and FTC
The IC3 Internet Crime Report 2025 shows how volume and losses diverge. Phishing and spoofing produced the most complaints, while investment fraud produced the largest losses.
| Crime type (IC3, 2025) | Complaints | Losses |
|---|---|---|
| Investment | 72,984 | $8,648,617,756 |
| Business email compromise | 24,768 | $3,046,598,558 |
| Tech and customer support | 47,794 | $2,134,675,818 |
| Personal data breach | 67,456 | $1,314,923,988 |
| Confidence and romance | 23,159 | $929,287,469 |
| Government impersonation | 32,424 | $797,943,193 |
| Non-payment and non-delivery | 56,478 | $503,373,587 |
| Phishing and spoofing | 191,561 | Not among top loss categories |
| Extortion | 89,129 | Not among top loss categories |
- Investment fraud growth: IC3 investment fraud losses rose from $4,570,275,683 in 2023 to $6,570,639,864 in 2024 and $8,648,617,756 in 2025 (IC3, Internet Crime Report 2025).
- Tech support growth: tech and customer support scam losses more than doubled in two years, from $924,512,658 in 2023 to $2,134,675,818 in 2025 (IC3, 2025).
- Card fraud: credit card and check fraud complaints carried $282,670,235 in losses in 2025 (IC3, 2025).
- FTC fraud types: imposter scams were the most reported category in 2025, with over 1 million reports and over $3.5 billion lost; investment scams caused over $7.9 billion in losses, about half the total, with an average individual loss over $10,000 (FTC testimony to the Joint Economic Committee, March 2026).
- FTC long-run trend: reported losses have risen every year for six years and are up nearly 430% since 2020, driven largely by a rise in losses of $100,000 or more (FTC testimony, March 2026).
- Contact and payment methods: text message was the top contact method by number of reports; social media caused the highest losses, over $2 billion in fiscal year 2025; bank payments caused the highest losses by payment method, followed by cryptocurrency, while credit cards were the payment method most often named (FTC testimony, March 2026).
For the phishing figures behind many of these losses, see the Phishing Statistics Guide.
Cryptocurrency and investment scams
| Statistic | Figure | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| Complaints involving cryptocurrency | 181,565 (up 21%) | IC3, 2025 |
| Losses involving cryptocurrency | $11,366,669,732 (up 22%) | IC3, 2025 |
| Cryptocurrency investment fraud | 61,559 complaints, $7.228 billion | IC3, 2025 |
| UK investment scam losses | £221.5 million (up 40%), 14,893 cases | UK Finance, Annual Fraud Report 2026, 2025 data |
| Australian investment scam losses | A$837.7 million | ACCC, calendar year 2025 |
Cryptocurrency appears in more than half of all IC3 losses by value, which is why recovery is so hard once funds leave the banking system. See the Investment Fraud Prevention for Banks and Platforms Guide and the Crypto Scam and Drainer Guide.
Older victims
- US complaints: IC3 complainants aged 60 and over filed 201,266 complaints in 2025 (up 37%) and reported $7.748 billion in losses (up 59%), an average of $38,500; 12,444 of them lost more than $100,000 (IC3, 2025).
- US loss types: the largest losses for people aged 60 and over came from investment fraud ($3,519,296,354), followed by tech and customer support and romance scams (IC3, 2025).
- US cryptocurrency: people aged 60 and over reported $4,347,081,557 in cryptocurrency-related losses (IC3, 2025).
- Australia: people aged 65 and over make up about 17.1% of the population but accounted for 26.5% of losses reported to Scamwatch in 2025 (ACCC, March 2026).
See the Elder Financial Abuse and Scam Prevention for Banks and Care Providers Guide.
United Kingdom: UK Finance and ONS
UK Finance splits losses into unauthorised fraud, where the account holder did not authorise the payment, and authorised push payment (APP) fraud, where the victim was tricked into sending it.
| Category (UK Finance, 2025 data) | Losses | Cases |
|---|---|---|
| Unauthorised fraud, total | £703.4 million (down 5%) | 3,814,128 |
| Card fraud, total | £594.9 million | 3,775,687 |
| Remote purchase (card not present) | £423.5 million | 3,196,962 |
| Lost and stolen cards | £109.8 million | 449,189 |
| Remote banking | £104.4 million (down 27%) | 37,646 |
| APP fraud, total | £576.4 million (up 19%) | 248,070 |
| APP purchase scams | £118.1 million | 175,809 |
| APP advance fee scams | £58.4 million (up 65%) | 24,080 |
| APP romance scams | £39.2 million | 6,335 |
| APP invoice and mandate scams | £41.3 million | 2,305 |
- Prevention: banks stopped £1.68 billion of unauthorised fraud in 2025 (UK Finance, 2026).
- Where scams start: online sources accounted for 66% of APP cases and 32% of losses, and telecommunications for 17% of cases and 28% of losses; UK Finance notes these figures are not definitive because victims may not know where a scam began (UK Finance, 2026).
- Reimbursement: £354.3 million of APP losses was returned to victims (up 30%), and 88% of in-scope APP losses were reimbursed in the first year of the Payment Systems Regulator's reimbursement rules (UK Finance, 2026).
- Survey view: the ONS Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated 4.5 million fraud incidents in the year ending June 2026, up 11%, including 2.8 million bank and credit account fraud incidents (ONS, published 22 October 2026).
- Reported offences: 348,944 offences were reported directly to Report Fraud (up 15%) and Cifas referred 405,990 (up 8%); the ONS cautions that part of the rise reflects improvements to the Report Fraud system (ONS, October 2026).
APP fraud typology is covered in the Authorised Push Payment (APP) Fraud Guide.
European Union and Australia
- EEA totals: payment fraud in the European Economic Area was €3.4 billion in 2022, €3.5 billion in 2023 and €4.2 billion in 2024, about 0.002% of the value of transactions (EBA and ECB, 15 December 2025).
- EEA by instrument: credit transfer fraud was €2.2 billion in 2024 (up 16%) and card fraud on EEA-issued cards €1.329 billion (up 29%) (EBA and ECB, 2025).
- Strong customer authentication: card fraud was 17 times higher when the payee was outside the EEA, where strong customer authentication is not legally required (EBA and ECB, 2025).
- Who pays: payment service users bore about 85% of credit transfer fraud losses in 2024, mainly from scams that tricked them into making the payment (EBA and ECB, 2025).
- Australia: losses rose 7.8% to A$2.18 billion in 2025 but remain 29.7% below the 2022 peak of A$3.1 billion; after investment scams, the largest losses came from payment redirection (A$166.8 million), romance (A$139.9 million), phishing (A$97.6 million) and remote access scams (A$69.9 million) (ACCC, 30 March 2026).
Recovery and under-reporting
| Statistic | Figure | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| IC3 Financial Fraud Kill Chain incidents | 3,900, with $1,163,919,846 in attempted theft | IC3, 2025 |
| Funds frozen by the IC3 Recovery Asset Team | $679,013,183 (58% success rate) | IC3, 2025 |
| Estimated total cost of US consumer fraud | Up to $195.9 billion | FTC estimate for 2024, in March 2026 testimony |
| Share of mass-market fraud victims who complained to an authority | 4.8% | Academic study cited in FTC testimony, March 2026 |
The recovery figures depend on speed: the Financial Fraud Kill Chain works on wire transfers reported quickly. The under-reporting figures are the main reason to treat every reported total on this page as a lower bound.
What the numbers mean for defenders
- Prioritise authorised fraud: the fastest growing losses in every source are scams where the victim makes the payment. Controls built for stolen credentials and cards do not stop them; payee verification, friction on first payments to new payees and scam warnings do. See the Real-Time Payments Fraud Guide.
- Protect older customers specifically: per-victim losses for the over-60s are nearly twice the average in IC3 data, so trusted contacts, cooling-off periods and staff intervention training pay back quickly.
- Treat cryptocurrency on-ramps as a risk signal: with more than half of IC3 losses involving cryptocurrency, a first transfer to an exchange by an older or newly onboarded customer deserves extra checks.
- Measure speed of reporting: the Kill Chain results show that money can be frozen when reports arrive fast. Make reporting easy and route reports to teams that can act the same day.
- Use the right number for the job: use survey data (ONS) for prevalence, confirmed-case data (UK Finance, EBA and ECB) for loss trends, and complaint data (IC3, FTC, ACCC) for scam typology. State which you are using.
The Fraud Metrics and KPIs Guide explains how to turn these external benchmarks into internal targets.
Practitioner checklist
- Quote every statistic with its publisher, report name and the period it covers.
- Do not add or compare figures from complaint, confirmed-case and survey sources as one series.
- Use the annual IC3 report (spring), FTC data (early in the year), UK Finance report (around June), ONS bulletin (quarterly), EBA and ECB report and ACCC release as your refresh calendar.
- State that reported losses are a lower bound and cite the FTC under-reporting estimate where relevant.
- Benchmark your own APP or scam losses against the UK Finance and EBA and ECB trends, not against card fraud alone.
- Track your share of losses from customers aged 60 and over and compare with IC3 and ACCC patterns.
- Measure time from scam report to recall or freeze request, and set a same-day target.
- Avoid statistics roundup pages that do not link to a primary report.
Standards and references
- FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center: Internet Crime Report 2025
- Federal Trade Commission: Testimony to the Joint Economic Committee on the Rising Scam Economy
- Federal Trade Commission: FTC Testifies Before Joint Economic Committee on Efforts to Combat Fraud
- UK Finance: Annual Fraud Report 2026
- Office for National Statistics: Crime in England and Wales
- European Banking Authority: Joint EBA-ECB Report on Payment Fraud
- ACCC: Annual Scam Losses Exceed $2 Billion
Related NHI Mgmt Group resources: Business Email Compromise and Fraud Statistics Guide · Identity Fraud Statistics · Phishing Statistics Guide · Authorised Push Payment (APP) Fraud Guide · Fraud Prevention Guide for Digital Businesses