FBI sees spike in cybercrime complainants; Florida among top states

Reporter: Rich Kolko Writer: Jack Lowenstein
Published: Updated:
Credit: WINK News.

The year 2020 wasn’t a banner year unless you were a cybercriminal. The FBI saw a huge spike in online complaints from all types of scams.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) saw a spike in complaints in 2021. The FBI says complaints were up nearly 70% from 2019 to 2020.

While it took almost seven years to record the first one million, the most recent million took 14 months. There have now been over six million cyber complaints.

The jump in complaints is partly because, in the beginning, people didn’t know where to file complaints.

But a chunk of it was also a result of the pandemic, when people were home and spending time on the computer.

Many of those complaints are coming from Florida. In 2020, Florida remained second in both numbers of victims and the amount of money lost.

Most complaints here are from people falling victim to phishing and romance scams.

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