Americans lost more to cybercrime in 2025 than ever before. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 1,008,597 complaints and recorded $20.877 billion in losses, up 26% from 2024. Much of the public debate has centered on India, where call centers have been repeatedly linked to fraud targeting U.S. victims. The data shows India is a real and growing problem, but the picture is more complicated than the headlines suggest.
Investment fraud leads the losses
The costliest crime type was investment fraud, at about $8.6 billion, roughly 41% of reported losses. Of that, cryptocurrency investment fraud accounted for $7.2 billion. The FBI says such scams are largely run by organized criminal enterprises based in Southeast Asia that use victims of human trafficking as forced labor. Separately, the Justice Department has cited reporting estimating that the scam industry defrauds Americans of nearly $10 billion a year.
The documented India link: tech-support fraud
The clearest documented link to India is tech and customer-support fraud, in which callers pose as Microsoft or Apple staff. It was the third-costliest crime type in 2025 at $2.1 billion, behind investment fraud and business email compromise. U.S. and Indian investigators have repeatedly traced such schemes to call centers in India. In December 2025, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, working with the FBI, raided a call center in Noida and arrested six people. The FBI says the network targeted more than 600 U.S. citizens, with victim reports to IC3 attributing more than $48.7 million in losses to it. India’s CBI put the amount defrauded at about $8.5 million. The trend is serious. The FBI estimated tech-support losses at over $800 million in 2022; IC3 recorded $2.134 billion in 2025.
What the data cannot show
IC3 categorizes crimes by type rather than by the perpetrator’s nationality, so no official statistic assigns a country share. Tech support, the one category with a documented India link, was about 10% of reported losses and about 5% of complaints. Indian-origin activity could also sit in other categories, such as government impersonation, but the data cannot show how much. By reported financial loss, the ranking is investment fraud ($8.6 billion), business email compromise ($3.046 billion), then tech support ($2.1 billion). Ransomware showed only $32.3 million in direct reported losses, though that excludes downtime and recovery costs.
Who is hurt most
Older Americans suffer most. Elder fraud losses reached $7.748 billion in 2025, up 59% from 2024, and tech-support scams targeting seniors accounted for $1.040 billion. Earlier FBI data found 69% of tech-support victims were 60 or older. IC3 figures cover only reported losses, so true totals are higher.
A cross-border problem, and India’s own role
Whatever any country’s share, the structure is the same: victims, operators and money sit in different jurisdictions, and payments move through mule accounts, cash couriers and cryptocurrency. The July 2025 Noida raid on a call center targeting British and other victims took 18 months of cooperation among India’s CBI, Britain’s National Crime Agency, the FBI and Microsoft. Scam activity is therefore not a national trait but an organized-crime problem that crosses borders.
Cooperation is producing results
The FBI says its work with Indian agencies since 2022 has involved more than 1,200 information exchanges and more than 475 arrests across 27 joint operations, including about 175 arrests in 13 operations in 2025. Officials point to several priorities: faster evidence sharing and extradition, rapid fund freezes, disrupting infrastructure such as spoofed numbers and mule accounts, crypto tracing, and targeted education for seniors. The IC3 Recovery Asset Team froze $679 million of $1.163 billion in attempted thefts in 2025. The U.S. Scam Center Strike Force restrained roughly $702 million in cryptocurrency in one April 2026 action.
