These Cybercrimes Are Trending Today

“Artificial intelligence, which makes so many things easier, is also helping criminals commit cybercrime. That's one of several trends showing up in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's latest report on internet crime complaints. As cybercrime continues to soar, young people and crypto investors are being hit harder, and more scammers are impersonating government officials. Here are four big takeaways from the report:

 

AI takes off

 

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center says it received more than 22,000 complaints of scams related to AI last year, with the victims' losses totaling around $893 million. This is the first year the FBI has broken out data for AI-related crimes.

 

With AI, fraudulent communications "can look very official and very legitimate to even the most trained individuals," says Michael Machtinger, deputy assistant director of the FBI Cyber Division.

 

The criminals, like everyone else, are still trying to figure out how best to use AI through trial and error. That means they are only going to get more creative and more dangerous, says Jake Braun, executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy.

 

"The AI companies like to say that today's AI is the worst AI you will ever use. What's also true is that these are the lowest number of AI complaints we are ever going to see," says Braun, who previously served in the White House as acting principal deputy national cyber director.

 

Teens are prime target

 

The FBI received more than 31,000 complaints of internet crimes against people under age 20 last year, up 74% from 2024 and about three times the number in 2015.

 

Younger people, who have been steeped in technology their entire lives, "live online. They trust what they do," says Ade Clewlow, associate director and senior adviser at cybersecurity consulting firm NCC Group. "They think other people will be the victims, but actually, as we've seen, they are just as susceptible as anyone else."

 

Scammers tend to heavily frequent social media, where many young people in particular spend significant time, says Judson Dressler, director of the risk operations center at Resilience, a cyber risk company in San Francisco. Often, criminals will use young people as a way to gain access to other potential victims in their networks, including their parents.

 

Government scams

 

Government-impersonation scams have become more prevalent, with the help of AI. There were more than 32,000 complaints to the FBI last year, up from around 17,000 the previous year.

 

"What began as clumsy phone calls from fake IRS agents demanding gift cards has evolved into something far more sophisticated and far harder to dismiss," Dressler says.

 

Caller IDs for bogus calls appear as legitimate agency numbers, emails carry official seals and accurate agency language, and in more advanced attacks, AI-generated deepfake audio and video replicate a public official, Dressler says.

 

Courtney M. Werning, a partner and attorney in Meyer Wilson Werning's Columbus, Ohio, office, has a 93-year-old client who recently lost $1.5 million to a government-impersonation scam.

 

Thieves, posing as FBI officials, convinced the client over a series of conversations that criminals had targeted her assets. They persuaded her to drain her accounts and deposit the money into crypto ATMs, where the thieves could withdraw it.

 

Scammers often prey on older people, many of whom are lonely and don't have a large network to bounce ideas off. "It's a perfect storm to get these older people to trust the process," Werning says.

 

Crypto fraud rises

 

Cryptocurrency investment fraud was the largest source of financial losses to victims of internet crime in the U.S. last year, with $7.2 billion of losses reported, up from $5.8 billion the year before. Losses have risen steadily during the past few years.

 

Many financial advisers don't offer advice on cryptocurrency investments, so people who want to invest often search for opportunities on their own, which sometimes leads them to scams, Werning says.

 

The FBI began an initiative called Operation Level Up in January 2024 to identify and notify victims of cryptocurrency investment fraud. As of December 2025, the FBI had notified 8,103 victims, saving them an estimated $511 million.

 

More broadly, the FBI has also boosted its educational efforts around cyber fraud. One source of information is IC3.gov, the Internet Crime Complaint Center's site. There have been more than five million downloads of public- and private-sector advisories posted on the site, Machtinger says.

 

He urges victims to report issues to the FBI through IC3.gov. "It could help you and prevent numerous other individuals from falling prey to similar kinds of criminal activity."” [1]

 

1. These Cybercrimes Are Trending Today. Cheryl Winokur Munk.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 04 June 2026: A10.