Top Internet Crimes: Your Money, Your Health, Your Heart
You’re probably used to seeing your spam box filling daily with junk emails, scams, and phishing attempts. At your job, you may have had to watch a training video on how to spot suspicious emails. News stories abound on the latest internet scams.
There’s a reason for all that, and it’s because these types of scams resulted in $2.71 billion in losses in the U.S. in 2018, according to the FBI, with about about 258,000 victims. The FBI receives an average of 300,000 complaints per year -- 900 complaints a day. In 2018, more than 62,000 of the victims were over the age of 60, and were taken for $650 million.
The stats come from the FBI’s 2018 Internet Crimes Report, the annual report of their Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3.gov). Based on the report, these are the most prevalent types of internet crimes, in order of financial losses to victims.
Victim losses: $1.3 billion
This is a scam targeting anyone working with foreign suppliers and/or businesses regularly performing wire transfer payments. These sophisticated scams are carried out by fraudsters compromising email accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques to conduct unauthorized transfer of funds.
Victim losses: $363 million
A perpetrator deceives a victim into believing they have a family, friendly or romantic relationship, and the victim is persuaded to send money, personal and financial information, or items of value, or to launder money on behalf of the perpetrator. Some variations of this scheme are romance/dating scams or the grandparent’s scam.
Victim losses: $253 million
A deceptive practice that induces investors to make purchases on the basis of false information. These scams usually offer the victims large returns with minimal risk. Variations of this scam include retirement schemes, Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes.
Victim losses: $184 million
This crime claimed the most victims in 2018, at 65,116. In non-payment situations, goods and services are shipped, but the victim doesn’t receive payment. In non-delivery situations, payment is sent, but goods and services are never received.
Victim losses: $149 million
This is any fraud involving real estate, rental or timeshare property.
Victim losses: $149 million
A leak or spill of personal data that is released from a secure location to an untrusted environment.
Victim losses: $118 million
A leak or spill of business data that is released from a secure location to an untrusted environment. It may also refer to a data breach within a corporation or business where sensitive, protected, or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so.
Victim losses: $100 million
Identity theft involves a perpetrator stealing another person’s personal identifying information, such as name or Social Security number, without permission to commit fraud.
Victim losses: $92 million
In advance fee schemes, the perpetrator informs a victim that the victim has qualified for a large financial loan or has won a large financial award, but must first pay the perpetrator taxes or fees in order to access the loan or award. The victim pays the advance fee, but never receives the promised money.
Victim losses: $89 million
This is a wide-ranging term for fraud committed using a credit card or any similar payment mechanism as a fraudulent source of funds in a transaction.
Victim losses: $83 million
There were 51,146 victims of extortion in 2018, according to the FBI. Unlawful extraction of money or property through intimidation or undue exercise of authority is extortion. It may include threats of physical harm, criminal prosecution, or public exposure.
Victim losses: $70 million
Contact information (phone number, email, and website) is deliberately falsified to mislead and appear to be from a legitimate source. For example, spoofed phone numbers making mass robo-calls; spoofed emails sending mass spam; forged websites used to mislead and gather personal information. Spoofing is often used in connection with other crime types.
Victim losses: $64 million
A government official is impersonated in an attempt to collect money.
Victim losses: $60 million
An individual is contacted about winning a lottery or sweepstakes they never entered, or to collect on an inheritance from an unknown relative and are asked to pay a tax or fee in order to get their award.
Victim losses: $53 million
An individual is sent a payment/commission and is instructed to keep a portion of the payment and send the remainder to another individual or business.
Victim losses: $48 million
Phishing is unsolicited email, text messages, and telephone calls purportedly from a legitimate company requesting personal, financial, and/or login credentials.
Victim losses: $45 million
An individual believes they are legitimately employed, and loses money or launders money or items during the course of their employment.
Victim losses: $39 million
A tech support scam attempts to gain access to a victim’s electronic device by falsely claiming to offer tech support, usually for a well-known company. Scammers ask for remote access to the victim's device to clean up viruses or malware or to facilitate a refund for prior support services.
Victim losses: $22 million
In these scams, a perpetrator uses false accusations, statements of fact or express of an intention to inflict pain, injury, or punishment to intimidate a victim.
Victim losses: $20 million
Merchandise or services are purchased or contracted by individuals online for which the purchasers provide payment. The goods or services received end up being much lesser quality or quantity than was described by the seller.
Victim losses: $16 million
This is theft and illegal use of others’ ideas, inventions, and creative expressions, including everything from trade secrets and proprietary products to parts of movies, music, and software.
Victim losses: $15 million
A con artist may call a victim pretending to be a collection agent collecting an overdue payment. This scammer will claim that a civil complaint is filed in order to scare the victim into paying.
Victim losses: $7.4 million
Software or code intended to damage or disable computers and computer systems. Sometimes scare tactics are used by the perpetrators to solicit funds.
Victim losses: $4.5 million
These schemes may include offers for fake insurance cards, health insurance marketplace assistance, stolen health information, or may involve medications, supplements, weight loss products, or diversion/pill mill practices.
Victim losses: $3.6 million
A type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until money is paid. The $3.6 million does not include estimates of lost business, time, wages, files, equipment, and may be higher, because some victims do not report any loss amount to the FBI.
Victim losses: $2 million
A denial of service attack floods a network/system with multiple requests, slowing down or interrupting service.
Victim losses: $1.7 million
Individuals receive packages purchased through fraudulent means and subsequently repackage the merchandise for shipment, usually abroad.
Victim losses: $1 million
Perpetrators set up false charities, usually following natural disasters, and profit from individuals who believe they are making donations to legitimate charitable organizations.
Victim losses: $926,953
Any fraud that involves online gambling, including against gamblers or online casinos, such as colluding to manipulate an outcome. Though losses were nearly a million dollars, this type of crime was among the lowest for victim count, at 181.