Highlights
This article is available as a YouTube podcast
For the last full official report in 2023, the FBI estimates that overall property crime (i.e., burglary-larceny-vehicle theft decreased by 2.4 percent. There were 6.4 million property crimes.
Reports below indicate that porch theft, cargo theft, and retail theft are all increasing dramatically.
As to estimating and understanding the nature of property crime in the US, the FBI’s decrease doesn’t make sense.
Do we need to reevaluate how we collect and report federal crime statistics?
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention and Statistics for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of Criminology and Public Affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former police officer. Retired federal senior spokesperson.
Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Produced successful state anti-crime media campaigns.
Thirty-five years of directing award-winning (50+) public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed thousands of times by every national news outlet, often with a focus on crime statistics and research. Created the first state and federal podcasting series. Produced a unique and emulated style of government proactive public relations.
Certificate of Advanced Study-The Johns Hopkins University.
Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.
Sign up for notice of new articles on the front page of this site.
Daily news summations on crime, violent crime, law enforcement, and the justice system are offered under “Google Crime News” in the banner of this website.
A comprehensive overview of crime for recent years is available at Violent and Property Crime Rates In The U.S.
Quote
“Interestingly, Americans were almost four times more likely to say crime is a problem nationally than they are to say it’s a problem for them personally. We’re a nation that consumes a lot of videos of people doing crimes.” Slate.
Article
This article addresses a recent 2024 FBI report on cybercrime. It also challenges the latest full overall crime report from the FBI in 2023, stating that property crime decreased by 2.4 percent. Property crime also decreased considerably for the first six months of 2024, per the FBI.
Sources for increasing cargo, porch, and retail thefts are included to add perspective. But the focus of this article remains a comparison of two FBI reports on overall property crime and cybercrime.
Cybercrime
Readers should have a comprehensive overview of the latest cybercrime statistics from multiple agencies, which is the purpose of this article. Different years and types of measurement were used, thus, comparisons can be challenging.
The article also addresses the nature of overall crime statistics, where FBI reports state that property crime is down, yet another FBI report on cybercrime states that it’s up dramatically. How can you have a 33 percent increase in one year for a form of property crime, yet state that overall property crime decreased?
The quick answer is that the FBI’s measure of property crimes does not include cybercrime. Should it?
A variety of reports from the US Department of Justice (Bureau of Justice Statistics) and Gallup are included in this article to add context and a comprehensive overview of cybercrime.
Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, approximately seven percent of cybercrime incidents are reported to law enforcement.
See the appendix of this article for USDOJ definitions of “cybercrime.” Multiple crimes fall under the umbrella of cybercrime. There are forms of cyber sex crimes that are included in the FBI data.
USA Today
USA Today: “Scammers and cybercriminals stole a record total of $16.6 billion from Americans in 2024, marking a 33% increase in losses from 2023, the FBI said in a new report on April 23.”
“The report released by the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) revealed that the “staggering” new record is likely an undercount of the total loss (emphasis added) from cyber-enabled fraud and scams, according to Cynthia Kaiser, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division. The figure is only representative of information and complaints submitted by victims to the IC3, FBI officials confirmed.”
“In 2024, the IC3 received 859,532 complaints regarding scams, fraud, and other suspected internet crimes, according to the report. The majority of reported losses — nearly 83%— were due to cyber-enabled fraud, which often involved the theft of money, data, or identity; or the creation of counterfeit goods or services, the IC3 found.”
The FBI Releases Annual Internet Crime Report
The top three cyber crimes, by number of complaints reported by victims in 2024, were phishing/spoofing, extortion, and personal data breaches. Victims of investment fraud, specifically those involving cryptocurrency, reported the most losses—totaling over $6.5 billion.
According to the 2024 report, the most complaints were received from California, Texas, and Florida. As a group, people over 60 suffered the most losses at nearly $5 billion and submitted the greatest number of complaints.
Previous FBI Cybercrime Report
There have been huge increases in cybercrimes since 2019. There have been 37 billion dollars in cybercrime losses since 2019. These crimes cost Americans far more financially and emotionally than street crimes or burglaries and larcenies.
Bureau Of Justice Statistics Cybercrime Report
The Bureau of Justice Statistics uses the National Crime Victimization Survey to gauge crime statistics. The FBI uses reported crimes. The vast majority of all crimes are not reported.
Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the USDOJ, 24 million persons were victims of identity theft during the prior 12 months in 2021, costing 15.1 billion dollars. This is numerically (and financially) far more than the 4 million victims (and 14 billion in losses) from 2019 to 2023 identified by the FBI for overall cybercrimes. The 24 million crime identity theft victims are also far more than the 14 million general crime victims identified by the FBI in 2022.
Gallup Cybercrime Report
Per Gallup (2021), beyond the 23 percent of households victimized by violent and property crimes, 28 percent of households had their credit card stolen by hackers and 17 percent of households were victims of identity theft.
How Many Cybercrimes Are Reported To Law Enforcement?
For identity theft, roughly 7 percent of incidents were reported per the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
FBI Overall Property Crimes in 2023- Crimes Reported To Law Enforcement
According to FBI data, approximately 6.4 million property crimes were reported in the United States in 2023. This figure encompasses offenses such as burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft, and represents a 2.4% decrease compared to 2022. Cyber crimes were not included. Deep Sentinel+4NPR+4Deep Sentinel+4
The FBI has not publicly released the total dollar loss attributed to property crimes in the United States for 2023. The most recent available data on property crime losses comes from 2019, when victims experienced an estimated $15.8 billion in losses due to property crimes.
While the FBI has not published an official figure for the total dollar loss due to property crimes in 2023, a report from Deep Sentinel estimates that property crimes resulted in approximately $280.5 billion in losses that year. This figure encompasses various offenses, including burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Deep Sentinel
FBI Overall Property Crime Statistics for The First Six Months of 2024
Reported property crime decreased by 13.1 percent.
Other Property Crimes Are Showing Dramatic Increases
Cargo Theft: In 2024, Verisk CargoNet recorded 3,798 incidents of cargo theft, representing a 26% increase over 2023.
Total reported losses topped nearly $455 million, according to Verisk CargoNet, but industry experts told CNBC that number is likely lower than the true toll because many cases go unreported. Numerous experts who spoke to CNBC estimate losses are close to $1 billion or more a year.
Train cargo thefts alone shot up about 40% in 2024, with more than 65,000 reported incidents, according to the Association of American Railroads.
120 Million Porch Package Thefts–More Than All FBI Property Crimes: There are 120 million porch package thefts in the US. Searches for “stolen package” spike every December, according to Google Trends.
The survey indicated that there are far more porch pirate thefts than total reported property crimes to the FBI. The financial toll of these thefts is $16 billion.
Retail Shrink: (shoplifting-organized attacks) hit $94.5 billion in 2021, a 53% jump from 2019, according to the National Retail Federation’s annual survey of around 60 retail member companies, CNN. Data from a variety of sources suggests that shoplifting losses continue to increase.
According to the National Retail Federation, $112.1 billion in losses were attributed to shrink, mostly theft and organized retail crime (ORC)—in 2022, a 19% increase over the year before.
Conclusions
The FBI in 2025 stated that cybercrime increased by 33 percent in 2024.
For the last full report in 2023, the FBI estimates that property crime (i.e., burglary-larceny-vehicle theft decreased by 2.4 percent. For the first six months of 2024, the FBI estimates that property crime decreased by 13.1 percent.
Three things stand out: 1. There are immense increases in cybercrimes, 2. the FBI’s estimate that overall property crimes decreased for their last official full report in 2023 and the first six months of 2024 is simply impossible if you include cybercrime as a form of property crime, and 3. if you include cargo, porch, and retail crime statistics, FBI assertions that property crime decreased for their most recent reports seems inaccurate.
Maybe it’s time to reevaluate how we collect and analyze crime statistics. Those of us writing about crime have understood for decades that it’s difficult to put violent and property crime statistics into perspective.
My inclusion of multiple sources makes an understanding of property crime challenging. I understand that the FBI offers data that has been consistent for many years, and the only way they can give the rest of us an indication of crime rising or decreasing over the years requires some consistency.
But there comes a point where stating that a crime category is up or down needs reevaluation.
Chat GPT
Chat GPT and Google searches assisted me in researching sources for this article.
Privacy Policy
We do not collect your personal information. See our privacy policy at “About This Site.”
See More
See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.
Most Dangerous Cities/States/Countries at Most Dangerous Cities.
US Crime Rates at Nationwide Crime Rates.
National Offender Recidivism Rates at Offender Recidivism.
The Crime in America.Net RSS feed (https://crimeinamerica.net/?feed=rss2) provides subscribers with a means to stay informed about the latest news, publications, and other announcements from the site.
FBI – Cybercrime Definition and Categories
The FBI treats cybercrime as a broad set of criminal acts involving computers or networks. It primarily includes:
1. Computer Intrusions
-
Hacking (unauthorized access)
-
Malware distribution (viruses, ransomware)
-
Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks
2. Online Fraud and Identity Theft
3. Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC)
-
Child pornography
-
Online enticement
-
Sextortion
4. Cyber-Enabled Financial Crimes
-
Wire fraud
-
Cryptocurrency fraud
-
Investment scams online
5. Critical Infrastructure Attacks
The FBI often investigates these through its Cyber Division and collaborates with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) for reporting and tracking.
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) – Cybercrime Definition and Scope
The BJS focuses on data collection and statistics rather than investigation. It typically splits cybercrime into two main categories:
1. Cyberattacks
-
Viruses, spyware, or hacking that target networks, computers, or data
2. Cybertheft
-
Incidents where money or sensitive data is stolen via electronic means (e.g., phishing, credit card fraud online)
BJS also includes “other computer security incidents”, such as:
BJS data often come from surveys like the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) or the Cybercrime Supplement, focusing on both households and businesses.
