US tech support losses more than doubled in two years
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center data shows tech support fraud losses in the United States rising from $924.5 million in 2023 to $1.46 billion in 2024 and $2.13 billion in 2025 — a 131% increase in two years. Complaint volume grew far more slowly, from 37,560 to 47,794, meaning the average loss per complaint roughly doubled. Tech support is now the third-largest loss category the FBI tracks.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Ongoing
- Reported loss
- $2.1 billion
- Victims
- 47,794
- Schemes
- Fake tech support, Refund and remote access scams
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-06
The facts, as recorded
- 2023: 37,560 complaints, $924,512,658 in losses.
- 2024: 36,002 complaints, $1,464,755,976.
- 2025: 47,794 complaints, $2,134,675,818.
- Losses rose 131% over two years while complaints rose 27% — losses per complaint roughly doubled.
- In 2025 only investment fraud and business email compromise produced larger reported losses.
- 43% of reported tech support transactions in 2025 went by cryptocurrency, and a further 20% by wire transfer or ACH.
- The FBI separately recorded roughly 725 gold courier complaints and $311.8 million in losses, linked to victims of tech support and government impersonation schemes.
Why this case matters
Tech support fraud used to be a nuisance crime. A few hundred dollars for a “cleanup” that did nothing. The chart no longer looks like that.
Losses more than doubled in two years while complaint counts rose by about a quarter. That gap is the whole story: the scheme is not reaching many more people, it is taking much more from each of them.
What changed
The pop-up is now an opening, not the product. The old scheme sold a fake service. The current one uses the fake service to establish a live phone conversation, and then escalates: your accounts have been compromised, your identity has been used, your money must be moved somewhere safe, there is an investigation.
Two details in the FBI’s data confirm the shift. First, the payment mix — 43% of reported tech support transactions in 2025 went by cryptocurrency, which is not how anyone pays for a virus removal. Second, the gold couriers: roughly 725 complaints and .8 million, which IC3 links specifically to victims of tech support and government impersonation.
A scheme where people hand over gold bars at the door is not a computer support scam any more. It has become an impersonation scam that happens to start with a computer.
Reading the numbers honestly
These are reported losses, and IC3 receives only a fraction of internet crime. Complaint counts also move for reasons unrelated to crime — awareness campaigns, and the FBI’s own victim-notification work both push reporting up.
But the ratio is harder to explain away. Losses per complaint roughly doubling in two years is not what a reporting artefact usually looks like; it is what an escalating scheme looks like.
What it tells you about the scheme
If you are helping an older relative think about this, the useful frame is not “don’t fall for pop-ups”. It is: the pop-up is not the crime. The phone call is. Everything that costs money happens after somebody dials the number on the screen, and the single intervention that works is not dialling it.
Sources
- 2025 Internet Crime Report. FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: All complaint counts, loss totals, the payment-method split for tech support, and the gold courier figures.
- 2024 Internet Crime Report. FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The 2022 to 2024 comparison series for tech support.