> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://unhyd.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# 2025 Fraud Losses: Why the FTC and FBI Totals Cannot Be Added Together
- URL: https://unhyd.com/article/2025-fraud-losses-ftc-fbi-comparison/
- Published: 2026-10-16T00:59:24.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-16T00:59:24.000Z
- Description: The FTC counted $15.9 billion in reported consumer fraud losses; the FBI counted $20.877 billion in internet-crime losses. They are different datasets, not a national sum.
- Author: Unhyd Editorial
- Tags: Business, Consumer Fraud, FTC, FBI, Cybercrime, Data Analysis, Financial Security

The 2025 fraud losses reported by two federal agencies tell different stories about money Americans lost to fraud and internet crime. The Federal Trade Commission recorded $15.9 billion in reported consumer fraud losses. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded $20.877 billion in reported internet-crime losses. Add them together and the result is nearly $36.8 billion. But that arithmetic does not produce a defensible estimate of the nation's total fraud losses.

The reason is more important than a rounding error. The agencies collect complaints through different channels, cover different kinds of misconduct and do not publish a joint reconciliation showing which incidents appear in both systems. The [FTC's March testimony](https://search.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/03/ftc-testifies-joint-economic-committee-agencys-efforts-combat-fraud?ref=unhyd.com) and the FBI's [2025 IC3 report](https://www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2025%5FIC3Report.pdf?ref=unhyd.com) are both valuable. They are not two pieces of a national balance sheet that can simply be stacked.

## What the 2025 fraud losses numbers actually say

The FTC told Congress that its Consumer Sentinel Network received approximately three million fraud reports for 2025, with $15.9 billion in losses reported. Investment scams accounted for $7.9 billion, the largest loss category, while imposter scams generated more than one million reports and over $3.5 billion in reported losses. The figures are based on what was reported to the agency and its contributing organizations, not a census of every scam.

The FBI's IC3 counted 1,008,597 complaints and $20.877 billion in losses for the same calendar year. Its report says losses increased 26% from 2024\. Investment fraud accounted for approximately $8.65 billion, business email compromise for about $3.05 billion, and tech or customer-support fraud for roughly $2.13 billion. IC3 covers internet-enabled misconduct beyond the ordinary consumer-scam categories, including business losses and certain cyber incidents.

Both agencies therefore identify investment scams as a major source of reported losses. That is a useful point of convergence. But the difference between the FTC's $7.9 billion investment figure and the FBI's roughly $8.65 billion does not measure missing victims, better detection, or a distinct pool of cases. Those interpretations would require linked records and comparable classification rules that the published summaries do not provide.

## Why the two federal totals cannot be added

Imagine a person who loses money after following a fraudulent investment advertisement. The person might complain to the FTC, report the suspected internet crime to the FBI, tell a state regulator, and contact a consumer-protection organization. Multiple reports do not automatically mean multiple losses. Conversely, someone who never reports a scam appears in neither agency's published totals.

The FTC says Consumer Sentinel receives information both directly from consumers and from data contributors. IC3 receives internet-crime complaints and analyzes them for law-enforcement purposes. The agencies' public 2025 summaries do not state how many underlying losses are common to both. It would therefore be inaccurate to say the figures definitely overlap by a specific amount, just as it would be inaccurate to assume they are mutually exclusive.

The safe comparison is side by side: $15.9 billion reported through one consumer-protection system; $20.877 billion reported through a broader internet-crime complaint system. Their simple sum, $36.777 billion, is a mathematical result with no demonstrated status as a de-duplicated national total. Their difference, $4.977 billion, is not a measure of unreported fraud either.

![Comparison graphic showing the FTC’s reported $15.9 billion in consumer fraud losses and the FBI IC3’s reported $20.877 billion in internet-crime losses for 2025, with a note that the figures have different scopes and should not be added together.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/df/e4/dfe4d080-643c-453a-8a60-0452bdbc0efd/content/images/2026/10/FTC-vs.-FBI-Fraud-Loss-Reports.jpg)

The FTC reported $15.9 billion in consumer fraud losses in 2025, while the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported $20.877 billion in internet-crime losses. Because the datasets use different reporting systems, categories and scopes, they should not be combined into a single national fraud-loss total. Sources: FTC; FBI IC3\. Graphic: Unhyd.

## Three ways the denominators differ

**Who reports.** The FTC's figures concern consumer fraud reports flowing into Sentinel. IC3 accepts complaints from individuals and organizations about cyber-enabled crimes, including losses involving businesses. That alone changes what the reported dollar total can represent.

**What is counted.** The FTC organizes its consumer reports around marketplace problems and scam types. The FBI organizes internet-crime complaints around crime types such as phishing, business email compromise, ransomware, data breaches and investment fraud. A label that sounds similar across the two systems need not have an identical operational definition.

**What the unit means.** Neither complaint count should casually be relabeled as a count of unique victims. The FBI explicitly warns in Appendix C that a complainant can file more than once, that losses are de-duplicated as much as possible and that descriptive data can change as analysis proceeds. Even within IC3, the figures are a point-in-time assessment rather than a final adjudication of every allegation.

That caveat matters when a headline turns an average into a portrait of a typical victim. Dividing IC3's reported losses by its complaint count yields about $20,700 per complaint, consistent with the FBI's published average. It does not mean the typical victim lost that much. A relatively small number of very large losses can pull an arithmetic mean upward, and complaints are not interchangeable with unique people.

## What the comparison does reveal

The most defensible finding is not that one agency has discovered the true cost. It is that two different reporting systems independently describe an enormous volume of financial harm, with investment fraud near the top of both loss rankings. That convergence supports the seriousness of the problem without resolving its total size.

The FTC's separate [social-media analysis](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/data-visualizations/data-spotlight/2026/04/reported-losses-scams-social-media-eight-times-higher-2020?ref=unhyd.com) adds another useful dimension: people reported $2.1 billion lost to scams that began on social media in 2025\. This is a contact-channel breakdown inside FTC reporting, not another $2.1 billion to add to its $15.9 billion total. It helps explain how fraud reaches people, not how to inflate the national sum.

Similarly, IC3's figures for business email compromise and technology-support scams illuminate particular mechanisms of loss. Those categories can guide organizations toward payment-verification controls and consumer education. They should not be interpreted as a complete census of every such incident in the country.

## Why AI complicates the next fraud estimate

Fraudsters can now use synthetic voices, altered video and automated messages to make an approach look more credible. That raises practical questions about identity verification and reporting categories. A convincing deepfake call can be part of an investment scam, a business-payment scam or an impersonation scheme; the technique and the financial offense are not necessarily the same category.

Unhyd's earlier examination of [deepfake social engineering](https://unhyd.com/article/deepfake-social-engineering-ciso-survey-2026/) addressed the operational problem: an apparently familiar voice or face should not bypass a separate approval step for money or sensitive information. A more recent report on the [Fireworks security incident](https://unhyd.com/article/fireworks-security-incident-prompts-new-credential-rotation/) illustrates a different security issue, exposed credentials, that also depends on precise incident scope and disciplined remediation. Neither article supplies an estimate of national fraud losses, and neither should be made to do so.

The analytical mistake to avoid is treating a technology descriptor, a crime category and a victim's reported loss as three additive pieces of damage. They may describe the same underlying episode from different angles. The FBI's own report distinguishes crime types from descriptors used to track tools or media involved in an offense.

## How to read the next fraud headline

Before repeating a large loss figure, ask four questions. Which organization collected the complaints? What period and kinds of incidents are covered? Are the figures reported losses, modeled estimates or recovered funds? And has anyone demonstrated that records from different sources were matched and de-duplicated?

Those questions are not an excuse to minimize the harm. Underreporting is real, and reported losses are not the same thing as all losses. But a credible estimate needs a method that accounts for missing incidents and possible duplicate reports. Adding two agency totals does neither.

For people confronting an actual scam, the distinction between databases should not delay action. The FBI advises victims of internet crime to contact affected financial institutions promptly, preserve transaction and communication records and report suspected incidents to IC3\. Consumers can also report fraud to the FTC. Reporting may help investigations and warnings, but filing a complaint does not guarantee recovery.

The useful conclusion from the 2025 fraud losses is narrower and stronger than the biggest possible headline: the FTC and FBI have each documented billions in reported harm through different systems. Read together, they illuminate a serious national problem. Read as one undifferentiated total, they risk obscuring what the evidence can actually prove.