These are figures that allow us to see more clearly the real cost of cybercrime. Coincidentally, the French National Police and the American FBI have both recently published their figures on the cost of cybercrime. Through the Thesee platform, which aims to centralize complaints for cases of online fraud, blackmail, extortion, and finally fraudulent access to an automated data processing system, the police recorded more than 68,000 complaints.
First scams
40% of these complaints are related to fake sales sites, 17% to fake sellers, 11% to fake buyers, and finally 10% to fake rentals. Beyond these scams, 9% of complaints relate to profile hacks and 7% to romance scams, sometimes accompanied by blackmail. Finally, ransomware represents 3% of complaints, now processed through 76 centralized judicial files in Paris.
75 judicial investigations, carried out under the direction of the Nanterre judicial court, concentrate major cases. These are either high-prejudice complaints, usually romance scams, or overlaps of different complaints. This was the objective of Thesee, with 42 files thus bringing together scams mentioned in 5,753 complaints. In total, these 75 investigations represent a cumulative loss of 8.6 million euros.
10 billion injuries reported in the United States
In the United States, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) of the American Bureau of Investigation (FBI) counted a cumulative reported damage of 10 billion dollars for acts of cybercrime, with a total of 800,944 complaints recorded in 2022. While the number of registered complaints has fallen – it was around 847,000 in 2021 – the harm reported is up sharply – it was only 6.9 billion in 2021.
The rise in investment fraud largely explains this rise, with reported losses jumping from about $1.45 billion in 2021 to $3.31 billion in 2022.
Fake tech support or fake customer service scams have targeted over 44,000 victims, for an estimated total damage of over $1 billion. Finally, in terms of ransomware attacks, the FBI counted 2,385 complaints, with three criminal groups at the forefront: LockBit (involved in 149 incidents), Alphv/BlackCat (114 incidents) and Hive (87 incidents) .