NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – New Mexicans lost more than $34 million to internet scams in 2022, according to a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Over a thousand people fell victim.
The numbers represent a massive increase from the previous year. In 2021, New Mexicans lost nearly $13 million. Now, that number has increased by more than 150%.
In 2022, New Mexicans lost the most money to business email compromises, the data shows. Victims lost nearly $2.7 million to such scams. In terms of number of victims, personal data breaches and extortion scams had the largest number of individual victims falling prey.
The data reveals that elderly New Mexicans fall victim to online scams most frequently. In 2022, one-third of the victims in New Mexico were over the age of 60, the FBI data shows. Individuals under the age of 20, on the other hand, made up less than 5% of the victims.
New Mexico isn’t alone in dealing with online scams. Over the past five years, global total losses reported to the FBI grew from only $2.7 billion in 2018 to more than $10 billion in 2022.
In the U.S., states with more people tend to have more victims. FBI reports more than 80,000 victims in California in 2022. Florida saw over 40,000 victims and Texas saw over 38,000 victims.
If you believe you have been the victim of an internet crime, you can file a report online at this link.
