Cybercrime Cost Wisconsin $194 Million Last Year. Here's Where It Actually Hit.

Every spring, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) publishes a report that answers a question most of us would rather not think about: how much did online crime actually take from us last year?

The 2025 IC3 Annual Report is out, and the Wisconsin numbers deserve a closer look than the headline.

The Wisconsin numbers

In 2025, people and businesses in Wisconsin filed 16,680 complaints with the FBI and reported $194,227,722 in losses. That puts Wisconsin 19th among states by complaint count and 26th by dollars lost — roughly in the middle of the pack, which sounds comforting until you remember that "middle of the pack" means about $532,000 lost every single day of the year.

And that is only what was reported. The IC3 numbers include just the victims who took the time to file a federal complaint. Plenty of businesses quietly absorb a fraudulent wire transfer or a ransomware payment without ever telling anyone.

A few details from the state tables stand out:

• Wisconsinites 60 and older reported $92 million of those losses — nearly half the state total, across just 3,014 complaints. Fraud targeting older adults is not a fringe problem; it is the center of the problem. If your parents or your retiring employees handle money online, they are the demographic criminals target most.
• Cryptocurrency was involved in $87.4 million of Wisconsin's reported losses. Investment scams that route victims into crypto are now the single most expensive crime category nationally.
• Wisconsin filed 279 complaints per 100,000 residents — so this is not a "big city" problem. It is distributed across communities like ours.

The national picture

Nationally, the FBI logged 1,008,597 complaints and $20.877 billion in reported losses in 2025 — the first time losses have passed the $20 billion mark. Three categories tell most of the story:

• Investment fraud: $8.6 billion — the most expensive category by far, driven by long-con crypto "investment" schemes.
• Phishing and spoofing: 191,561 complaints — the most common crime. This is the fake login page, the "your package is delayed" text, the email that looks like it came from your bank.
• Tech support scams: $2.1 billion — the fake "Microsoft" pop-up that convinces someone to hand over remote access.

One caveat worth knowing: the FBI's ransomware figure ($32 million in reported losses) explicitly excludes downtime, lost business, and recovery costs — the report says so itself. For a business, those are usually the biggest costs of a ransomware event, so treat that number as a floor, not a total.

What a Wisconsin business should actually do with this

The encouraging thing buried in these numbers is that the most common attacks are also the most preventable ones. Four moves cover a lot of ground:

1. Turn on multi-factor authentication everywhere — email first. Most business email compromise starts with one stolen password.
2. Verify payment changes by phone. If a vendor emails new banking details, call a number you already have on file — not the one in the email. This single habit defeats most wire fraud.
3. Train your people on phishing. It is the most-reported crime in the country for a reason. Short, regular training beats an annual lecture.
4. Report incidents at ic3.gov. It helps the FBI connect cases, and in wire fraud situations, fast reporting genuinely improves the odds of recovering funds.

The takeaway

$194 million left Wisconsin last year through email inboxes, fake investment platforms, and phone screens. None of it required a sophisticated hack of a well-defended network — most of it walked in through the front door.

At Coulee Tech, helping Wisconsin businesses close those front doors is a big part of what we do, from security awareness training to ransomware protection. If you are not sure where your business stands, that is a conversation worth having before you become one of next year's statistics.