We Must Protect Americans Against Cyber-Enabled Fraud

January 13, 2025

By National Cyber Director Harry Coker, Jr.

A frantic phone call that sounds like a grandchild; a text message offering a young professional a fantastic investment; an email to an attorney with instructions to wire settlement funds that they were expecting – cyber-enabled fraud can start in many different ways. On Friday, we here at ONCD convened a group of Federal cybersecurity and fraud experts at the White House to discuss cyber-enabled fraud – a persistent and growing problem that impacts the American people every day.

The Federal Trade Commission estimated consumer fraud losses of roughly $158 billion in 2023, and the Government Accountability Office estimates that fraud costs the Federal government $223 billion to $521 billion per year. Much of this fraud is cyber-enabled, and it is increasing – the Federal Bureau of Investigation received a record number of complaints through its Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in 2023, over 880,000. And these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg since most of the fraud goes unreported.

Unfortunately, anyone can be targeted. Americans of all ages report losses from frauds ranging from tech support scams to investment fraud. Businesses of all sizes become victims when their email is compromised.

The perpetrators, often foreign organized crime syndicates, leverage and exploit weaknesses across almost all industries to commit their crimes. No single company, industry, government agency, or even country, can solve this problem alone.

Protecting Americans from cyber-enabled fraud requires a whole-of-Nation effort. We must continue to scale up best practices, shore up our cyber defenses, and get ahead of the criminals’ rapidly increasing use of artificial intelligence to better protect the American public.

We are having some successes. In 2023, the Secret Service recovered over $1 billion in cyber financial crime losses, and the FBI found ways to stop $538 million in losses in suspected fraud cases, working with partners to paralyze criminals in their tracks. I had the opportunity to hear from these agencies and many other federal partners and White House components on Friday.

We shared ideas on how we can do more to protect Americans, and make it easier for people and businesses to protect themselves. There was strong agreement on the importance of tackling this issue on behalf of the millions of citizens who are defrauded every year.

I’ve discussed this issue with other domestic and international partners as well, including the United Kingdom – which is widely recognized as a leader in this field. In all these discussions, our partners’ commitment to action has been crystal clear.

The Federal government needs to lead, because the people we serve deserve solutions. We have to do everything we can to ensure that Americans’ hard-earned money stays where it belongs, with them. There’s a lot more work to do.