Criminals netted $3.5bn (£2.7bn) from cyber-crimes reported to the FBI alone in 2019, according to the service's Internet Crime Complaint Centre (IC3).
This comes after they received just over 467,000 complaints from individuals and businesses during the year and has had nearly five million since its inception in 2000.
The FBI warn that scamming techniques are becoming more sophisticated which is making it harder to determine whether the message victims receive is genuine or not. This is especially troubling for over 60s who are reported to be most at risk from these scams.
The IC3 received around 13,600 complaints from victims of tech-support fraud, a scam that involves the victim being called by someone claiming to be with tech support for a big company who claims there’s a problem with their computer which requires immediate fixing. Losses from this scam add up to more than $54 million across 48 countries.
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