US Americans lose almost 21 billion US dollars to cybercrime in 2025

Last year, the FBI counted a renewed increase in cybercrime cases in the USA, with the damage for US Americans rising to a new record high of a combined 20.877 billion US dollars. That's almost 26 percent more than in 2024, when the US police authority calculated 16.6 billion dollars in losses due to online crime. At the same time, the number of cases reported to the FBI in 2025 increased by 17 percent compared to the previous year, exceeding the one million mark for the first time.

While damages from cybercrime in the USA have been continuously rising for ten years, the number of reported cases had slightly decreased in 2024. In 2023, the FBI had still reported losses of 12 billion US dollars due to cybercrime, with a record number of 880,418 cases at the time. The US police authority bases its figures on data from the "Internet Crime Complaint Center" (IC3), where US Americans can report online fraud or scams. In 2025, the IC3 recorded almost 3000 complaints daily, the FBI writes.

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FBI-Cybercrime-Bericht 2025 (2 Bilder)

According to the FBI report, the most common cybercrime cases last year were phishing attacks (191,000), extortion (89,000), and investment fraud (72,000). Although other cases were reported much less frequently, there were also a considerable number of serious attacks in 2025, such as business email compromise (24,700), data breaches (3900), ransomware attacks (3600), and SIM swapping (971).

Greatest Losses in Cryptocurrencies

Investment fraud was among the most common scam attempts in 2025 (49 percent) and caused total losses of 8.6 billion dollars last year. However, damages related to cryptocurrencies were significantly higher. Cyberattacks on crypto investors led to losses of over 11 billion dollars in 181,565 cases. Overall, cyber fraud was responsible for damages totaling 17.7 billion dollars in 453,000 cases.

The amount of losses increases with the age of the victims. US Americans over 60 reported total damages of 7.75 billion dollars in 2025, more than double that of people between 50 and 60 years old (3.68 billion dollars). However, the older age group also filed significantly more reports with 201,266 cases than people in their 50s (124,820 cases). Interestingly, victims between 40 and 50 (167,066 cases) and between 30 and 40 (153,293 cases) reported more cybercrime attacks to the FBI than people between 50 and 60. The FBI calculates an average loss of 20,699 dollars per victim due to cybercrime.

Cyberattacks via AI and on Critical Infrastructure

For the first time, the FBI has also reported AI-related fraud attempts, which caused total damages of 893 million dollars in 22,300 cases. According to the police authority, in such cases, perpetrators used artificial intelligence to imitate voices, forge online profiles and documents, and create deepfake videos. The FBI classified two cases of successful attacks on critical infrastructure as data breaches. These involved a dam and a nuclear power plant.

As preventive measures against cybercrime, the FBI has blocked parts of financial transactions in 3900 cases, according to its own statements. Cybercriminals intended to seize 1.16 billion dollars, but the police authority was able to freeze 679 million dollars before they were lost. Additionally, the FBI has warned potential victims of investment fraud involving cryptocurrencies. Of the 3780 people informed, 78 percent were not aware they were targeted by a fraud attempt.

(fds)