Online scams cost Americans almost $150B last year – 7x more than reported

Online scams cost Americans an estimated $150 billion annually—seven times higher than FBI-reported figures—driven by AI-enabled deepfakes, compromised business email, and investment fraud, creating significant cybersecurity and operational risks for organizations. With only 14% of victims reporting crimes and Meta platforms facilitating 87% of scam distribution, IT leaders face mounting pressure to implement advanced threat detection, employee training, and incident response protocols. This dramatic underreporting gap signals that cyber risk exposure in enterprise environments is likely substantially underestimated, requiring urgent reassessment of security budgets and third-party platform governance.