WASHINGTON — More than $10 billion in losses fromwere reported to the FBI in 2022, the highest annual loss in the last five years, according to a new report from the bureau.
The report tallies a wide variety of fraud complaints — from marketing scams to ransomware — and is a metric for U.S. policymakers in measuring how much hacking and other schemes are costing the American economy. Ransomware, which locks computers until hackers are paid off, accounted for about $34 million in adjusted losses reported to the FBI last year. The relatively modest figure compared to other forms of fraud could be due to the fact that many victim organizations still do not report ransomware attacks to the FBI.
While ransomware tends to get the headlines, a different hacking scheme known as business email compromise leads to far more money stolen from victims in aggregate. This business scheme typically involves someone tricking a victim into wiring them money, often by impersonating a customer or a relative.
And yet they all pale in comparison to the biggest scammer of all. The US government and the Federal reserve.