Fraud & Closing Security3 months ago
IC3 puts 2025 reported internet crime losses at $20.9 billion
The FBI complaint centre logged 1,008,597 complaints. For anyone covering closing fraud, it is the one figure with no product attached to it.
What this story establishes
- The IC3 2025 annual report records $20.877 billion in reported losses across 1,008,597 complaints.
- The 2024 report, released 23 April 2025, recorded $16.6 billion, a 33% rise on 2023.
- Business email compromise accounted for $2.77 billion across 21,442 complaints in 2024.
- IC3 counts what was reported to the FBI, so it is a floor rather than a total.
There is no shortage of fraud statistics in the closing industry, and almost all of them are published by a company that sells something. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center is the exception, which is why it belongs in every story that quotes a vendor number.
The 2025 annual report records $20.877 billion in reported losses across 1,008,597 complaints. The prior report, released on 23 April 2025 and covering 2024, recorded $16.6 billion, a 33% increase over 2023, of which $2.77 billion was attributed to business email compromise across 21,442 complaints.
Its limits are the point
IC3 counts complaints filed with the FBI. Victims who never report, who report only to a local department, or whose loss is absorbed by an insurer without a federal filing do not appear. Business email compromise is also a general category and not a real estate one, so the closing-table share is not broken out.
That makes IC3 a floor, not a total, and a floor is exactly what a vendor figure needs beside it. A screening firm reporting that it flagged four files in ten is describing its own book. IC3 is describing what people told the FBI happened to them.