The FBI started counting charity fraud, and found $7.9 million
Charity appeared for the first time as its own crime type in the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report: 662 complaints and $7,907,609 in reported losses. The category did not exist in 2023 or 2024, which is worth reading carefully — it means the crime became visible, not that it began. The FTC recorded 11,019 charitable solicitation reports in 2024, and Canadian charity-scam losses rose even as reports fell.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States, Canada
- Outcome
- Ongoing
- Reported loss
- $7.9 million
- Victims
- 662
- Schemes
- Charity and disaster scams
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-06
The facts, as recorded
- IC3 recorded Charity as a crime type for the first time in 2025: 662 complaints, $7,907,609 in losses.
- The IC3 three-year comparison table marks Charity with an asterisk for 2023 and 2024, meaning the category was not captured in those years.
- Average reported loss per complaint was approximately $11,946 — high for a consumer category.
- The FTC logged 11,019 charitable solicitation reports in 2024, up from 9,976 in 2023.
- Canada 2021: 157 charity and donation reports, 57 victims, C$108,925.
- Canada 2025 to 30 September: 47 reports, 16 victims, C$83,007 — reports down 70% while losses per victim rose from about C$1,900 to about C$5,200.
Why this case matters
Something appeared in the 2025 IC3 report that had never been there before: a line for Charity.
The three-year comparison table marks it with an asterisk for 2023 and 2024, which the FBI explains means the crime type “was not captured in these years”. So the correct reading of 662 complaints and $7.9 million is not that charity fraud started in 2025. It is that the FBI started counting it.
That is a useful reminder about every chart on this site. A category appearing, disappearing or being redefined is a change in the measuring instrument, and it will look exactly like a change in the world if you are not watching for it.
What the number does tell you
The average is worth noting: roughly $11,946 per complaint. That is high for a consumer category — several times the average for online shopping fraud, and well above the reported average for romance fraud complaints.
Charity fraud is not, in the reported data, a matter of five-dollar donations. The complaints that reach a national reporting centre involve substantial sums, which fits the pattern of appeals made to people who give seriously and repeatedly.
Canada shows the familiar divergence
Canadian charity reports fell roughly 70% between 2021 and 2025 while loss per victim rose from about C$1,900 to about C$5,200. Same shape as the bank-investigator and prize-scam data: fewer people reached, more taken from each.
What it tells you about the scheme
Two practical points follow from the numbers rather than from any anecdote.
Charity fraud is under-measured almost everywhere — the FBI only began counting last year, and the FTC’s category counts reports rather than losses. Treat these figures as the first outline of something, not its dimensions.
And the sums involved are not trivial. A category with a five-figure average loss is not a matter of someone being talked out of pocket change at a supermarket door.
Sources
- 2025 Internet Crime Report. FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The Charity category's first appearance, its 662 complaints and $7,907,609 in losses, and the asterisks marking 2023 and 2024 as uncaptured.
- Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024. US Federal Trade Commission. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: 11,019 charitable solicitation reports in 2024 and the 2022 and 2023 comparison.
- Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre Fraud Reporting System Dataset. Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre / RCMP. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: Canadian Charity / Donation reports, victims and losses, 2021 to 30 September 2025.