Internet crime losses are on the rise, but how fast? We could get latest IC3 stats as soon as this week ... or not

UPDATE, April 4, 2025 — After writing this article last month (March, 2025), I realized that the focus of the article, the IC3 annual reports, do not always come out in March, as I had stated. In fact, for the past 10 years, the median publication date for these reports has been April 13. 

This became clear when I went back through my archives and checked the dates of the reports for years 2014 to 2013. I put these in a spreadsheet — see screenshot on the left — and for 2024 I calculated the median date, which turns out to be April 13.*

In my defense, the last five reports did appear before the median, with three in March, one in early April, and one in February. 

So where does that leave us? Waiting for the report on Internet crime losses for 2024 which could arrive any day between now and — checks table — the middle of June! 

Original Article: More and more people are losing more and more money to cyber-enabled criminals, or at least that's the way it seems to many of us. Unfortunately, solid metrics on cybercrime are hard to find, a topic that I explored in depth in this article: Advancing Accurate and Objective Cybercrime Metrics, Journal of National Security Law & Policy.

But as serious cybercrime watchers in the US will know, in March* of every year, one set of numbers is released that has stood the test of time: the IC3 Annual Report, an analysis of losses from Internet crimes reported to the FBI's Internet Crime and Complaint Center. While there are some issues with using the IC3 numbers as crime metrics—they were not originally collected as an exercise in crime metrics—I am satisfied that the IC3 reports reflect real world trends in cybercrime's impact on victims, as measured by direct monetary loss (for more details see the previously mentioned article).

The first of these reports was published in 2002 as the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) 2001 Internet Fraud Report. I keep a PDF copy of that one on my hard drive, along with all the others since. In recent years the full title has been something like The Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crime and Complaint Center (IC3) Internet Crime Report. 

As I write this, on March 15, 2025, I am eagerly awaiting the latest IC3 annual report, the one that shows Internet crime losses in 2024. When it comes out, I will update the graph at the top of this article. This charts the dramatic annual increase in losses over the last 10 years. 

The full story, which begins at the start of this century, is even more dramatic. In 2001, losses reported to IC3 were less than US$20 million, and it took 14 years for them to reach US$1 billion. However, it took half that time to blow through US$10 billion in 2022—that's 10X in seven years. Clearly, the figure is heading for US$15 billion. Did it get there in 2024? I'm hoping not, and my guess is it will hit US$14.5 billion in the 2024 report. 

I encourage you to check back here to see if I was right. Of course, it would be great if the number was substantially less than US$14.5 billion. In the meantime, I am keeping my fingers crossed that the IC3 report has not become a victim of the massive upheaval in federal agencies, ushered in by President Trump and executed by billionaire technocrat Elon Musk.

(Please feel free to DM @zcobb.bsky.social if you know how things are going at IC3.)