The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today revealed that Americans lost nearly $8.8 billion to various types of scams in 2022, following a significant increase of over 30% more losses due to fraud compared to the previous year.

In 2021, Americans also reported losses of over $5.8 billion from fraud, another massive increase of over 70% from 2020.

The FTC said Thursday that 2.4 million consumers said they lost money to scammers, with most of them scammed by imposters and online shopping scams. over the past year.

The top five categories of fraud also include scam reports involving prizes, sweepstakes and lotteries, investments, and business and employment opportunities.

“Consumers reported losing more money to investment scams – more than $3.8 billion – than any other category in 2022. This amount more than doubled the amount reported lost in 2021,” said the FTC. said.

“The second-highest amount of reported loss came from impostor scams, with $2.6 billion reported losses, compared to $2.4 billion in 2021.”

The FTC added 5.1 million consumer reports to its secure online Consumer Sentinel Network (Sentinel) database in 2022, with more than 1.1 million identity theft reports filed through the IdentityTheft website. gov of the FTC.

consumer protection agency also revealed last month that nearly 70,000 people reported record losses of $1.3 billion from romance scams in 2022.

Unfortunately, these statistics likely reflect only a fraction of the actual damage inflicted by romance scammers, since most frauds are never reported.

You can report attempted fraud at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and file an identity theft report at IdentityTheft.gov.

Once included in the Sentinel database, your report will be available to approximately 2,800 federal, state, local and international law enforcement professionals.

Each report can help investigators find fraudsters and aid in spotting trends and educating the public.