443 Internet Crime Complaints Sent To FBI From Nigeria In 2020: Report

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By Abiola Olawale

The United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has revealed Nigeria ranks as the 16th worst affected country by internet crime in 2020 with a total of 443 fraud complaints lodged from Nigeria.

This was contained in the 2020 Report of the Internet Crime Complaint Centre (IC3) — a U.S intelligence agency, published on the official website of FBI, on Wednesday.

The report also indicated that the United Kingdom ranked first with 216, 633 complaints, followed by Canada with 5,399 complaints.

Apart from Nigeria, South Africa was also listed among the ‘worst’ 20. South Africa ranked sixth with 1,754 complaints.

The report also revealed that the top three internet crimes reported in 2020 are, phishing scams, non-payment/non-delivery scams and exhortion.

Additionally, the IC3 received 791, 790 complaints, with reported losses estimated at about $4.2 billion.

The IC3 which was established in May 2000, to receive complaints of Internet crime, has now recorded a total of 5,679,259, since its inception.

The statement partly reads, “IC3 received a record number of complaints from the American public in 2020: 791,790, with reported losses exceeding $4.1 billion. This represents a 69 per cent increase in total complaints from 2019. Business E-mail Compromise schemes continued to be the costliest: 19,369 complaints with an adjusted loss of approximately $1.8 billion. Phishing scams were also prominent: 241,342 complaints, with adjusted losses of over $54 million. The number of ransomware incidents also continues to rise, with 2,474 incidents reported in 2020,” Deputy Director of FBI, Paul Abbate, added.

The top 20 countries and their number of victims are:

  1. United Kingdom 216,633
  2. Canada 5,399
  3. India 2,930
  4. Greece 2,314
  5. Australia 1,807
  6. South Africa 1,754
  7. France 1,640
  8. Germany 1,578
  9. Mexico 1,164
  10. Belgium 1,023
  11. Brazil 951
  12. Philippines 898
  13. Italy 728
  14. Spain 618
  15. Netherlands 450
  16. Nigeria 443
  17. Pakistan 443
  18. China 442
  19. Colombia 418
  20. Hong Kong 407.

It would be recalled that in 2019, IC3 received 467, 361 complaints, with an average of 1,300 per day. The report also recorded $3.5 billion losses from the individual and business victims. However, Nigeria wasn’t part of the top 20 international victim countries of internet fraud in 2019.

'Dotun Akintomide
'Dotun Akintomide
'Dotun Akintomide's journalism works intersect business, environment, politics and developmental issues. Among a number of local and international publications, his work has appeared in the New York Times. He's a winner of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Award. Currently, the Online Editor at The New Diplomat, Akintomide has produced reports that uniquely spoke to Nigeria's experience on Climate Change issues. When Akintomide is not writing, volunteering or working on a media project, you can find him seeing beautiful sites like the sandy beaches that bedecked the Lagos coastline.

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