In 2023, losses connected to worldwide cybercrimes reported to the FBI stood at $12.5 billion, crossing the $10-billion mark for the second year in a row. The report released in April 2024 stresses that this number is likely extremely conservative since it only factors in cases reported via the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and most reports originate in the United States. Among the more than 880,000 complaints registered, most monetary value was lost due to two attack vectors.
The Statista chart based on FBI data shows that investment fraud made up roughly 37 percent of all money lost in reported complaints. This type of fraud includes Ponzi and pyramid schemes or fraudulent retirement plans promising "large returns with minimal risk", according to the report's definition. Around $3 billion were lost due to business mail accounts being compromised via phishing or social engineering, enabling malicious actors to break into company accounts and initiate money transfers.