---
title: "Business email compromise statistics 2025: the FBI's numbers"
description: "Business email compromise in the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report: 24,768 complaints and about $3.05 billion in reported losses, out of $20.9 billion in total cybercrime losses. What the numbers mean for small finance teams."
url: https://payeeguard.pages.dev/business-email-compromise-statistics
---

Invoice fraud · checked 26 October 2026

# Business email compromise statistics (FBI, 2025)

Business email compromise (BEC) is when criminals use a hacked or fake email account to get a business to pay them: a fake invoice, "new bank details", or a boss asking for an urgent transfer. Here's how big it was in the FBI's latest annual report.

## The 2025 numbers

- **24,768** BEC complaints to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).
- **$3,046,598,558** in reported BEC losses, about **$3.05 billion**.
- That's roughly **$123,000 lost per complaint** on average.
- All cybercrime: **1,008,597** complaints and **$20.877 billion** in reported losses. BEC was about 15% of the money.
- Investment fraud was the largest category, at about $8.65 billion.

These are only crimes reported to IC3. Many businesses never report, so the real figures are higher.

## What it means for a small business

- **Few incidents, big losses each.** BEC is a small share of complaints but a large share of the money, because each one usually targets a real payment.
- **The weak point is a process, not technology.** Most cases succeed because a bank-detail change or urgent request is acted on from email alone.
- **Speed matters if it happens.** Banks can sometimes recall a payment if they hear about it within hours. [Paid a fake invoice?](https://payeeguard.pages.dev/paid-a-fake-invoice-what-to-do)

## The controls that stop it

Call back on a known number before any bank-detail change, require two people to approve changes, and hold first payments to new details. [8 controls to prevent invoice fraud](https://payeeguard.pages.dev/how-to-prevent-invoice-fraud) · [red flags](https://payeeguard.pages.dev/fake-invoice-red-flags) · [how to report it](https://payeeguard.pages.dev/how-to-report-invoice-fraud).

Source: [FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Internet Crime Report](https://www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2025_IC3Report.pdf) (released April 2026). Per-complaint average and share are our own arithmetic from the report's figures. Read 26 October 2026.

[Check a suspicious email free](https://payeeguard.pages.dev/#check) [Set up call-backs and approvals](https://payeeguard.pages.dev/app#/signup)