The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) last year fielded 467,361 complaints related to cybercrime activity that collectively cost victims $3.5 billion in losses, according the agency’s just released 2019 Internet Crime Report.
The 2019 complaint count represents a nearly 33 percent increase from the 2018 total of 351,937, and the $3.5 billion figure also jumped from $2.7 billion the previous year.
The three most commonly reported internet crimes last year were phishing/vishing/smishing/pharming attacks, non-payment/non-delivery scams (i.e. the scammer never pays for or never ships ordered merchandise) and extortion. Rounding out the top 10 were personal data breaches, spoofing, Business Email Compromise (BEC)/Email Account Compromise (EAC), confidence fraud, romance scams, identity theft, harassment/threats of violence and overpayment schemes.
Despite being only the six most commonly reported cybercrime in 2019, BEC/EAC campaigns constituted the offense with the highest reported loss totals, with nearly $1.78 billion in damages. In particular, the IC3 took note of an increase in the number of BEC/EAC complaints related to attempts by the perpetrators to divert of payroll funds. “In this type of scheme, a company’s human resources or payroll departmen ..
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