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Content Assessment: From Phishing to Business Email Compromise: The FBI 2020 Internet Crime Report
Information - 95%
Insight - 95%
Relevance - 90%
Objectivity - 95%
Authority - 100%
95%
Excellent
A short percentage-based assessment of the qualitative benefit of the post highlighting the announcement by the FBI of its 2020 Internet Crime Report.
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Press Announcement
FBI Releases the Internet Crime Complaint Center 2020 Internet Crime Report, Including COVID-19 Scam Statistics
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has released [March 17, 2021] its annual report. The 2020 Internet Crime Report includes information from 791,790 complaints of suspected internet crime—an increase of more than 300,000 complaints from 2019—and reported losses exceeding $4.2 billion. State-specific statistics have also been released and can be found within the 2020 Internet Crime Report and in the accompanying 2020 State Reports.
The top three crimes reported by victims in 2020 were phishing scams, non-payment/non-delivery scams, and extortion. Victims lost the most money to business email compromise scams, romance and confidence schemes, and investment fraud. Notably, 2020 saw the emergence of scams exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic. The IC3 received over 28,500 complaints related to COVID-19, with fraudsters targeting both businesses and individuals.
In addition to statistics, the IC3’s 2020 Internet Crime Report contains information about the most prevalent internet scams affecting the public and offers guidance for prevention and protection. It also highlights the FBI’s work combating internet crime, including recent case examples. Finally, the 2020 Internet Crime Report explains the IC3, its mission, and functions.
The IC3 gives the public a reliable and convenient mechanism to report suspected internet crime to the FBI. The FBI analyzes and shares information from submitted complaints for investigative and intelligence purposes, for law enforcement, and for public awareness.
With the release of the 2020 Internet Crime Report, the FBI wants to remind the public to immediately report suspected criminal internet activity to the IC3 at ic3.gov. By reporting internet crime, victims are not only alerting law enforcement to the activity, but aiding in the overall fight against cybercrime.
Internet Crime Report 2020 (PDF) – Mouseover to Read Embedded Report
2020 IC3 ReportReport Extract
Business Email Compromise (BEC)
In 2020, the IC3 received 19,369 Business Email Compromise (BEC)/ Email Account Compromise (EAC) complaints with adjusted losses of over $1.8 billion. BEC/EAC is a sophisticated scam targeting both businesses and individuals performing transfers of funds. The scam is frequently carried out when a subject compromises legitimate business email accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds.
As the fraudsters have become more sophisticated, the BEC/EAC scheme has evolved in kind. In 2013, BEC/EAC scams routinely began with the hacking or spoofing of the email accounts of chief executive officers or chief financial officers, and fraudulent emails were sent requesting wire payments be sent to fraudulent locations. Over the years, the scam evolved to include compromise of personal emails, compromise of vendor emails, spoofed lawyer email accounts, requests for W-2 information, the targeting of the real estate sector, and fraudulent requests for large amounts of gift cards.
In 2020, the IC3 observed an increase in the number of BEC/EAC complaints related to the use of identity theft and funds being converted to cryptocurrency. In these variations, we saw an initial victim being scammed in non-BEC/EAC situations to include Extortion, Tech Support, Romance scams, etc., that involved a victim providing a form of ID to a bad actor. That identifying information was then used to establish a bank account to receive stolen BEC/EAC funds and then transferred to a cryptocurrency account.
Additional Reading
- Cybersecurity Challenges for Artificial Intelligence: Considering the AI Lifecycle
- SOARing Costs? Considering Data Breach Economics
Source: ComplexDiscovery