Kendall County Times

Illinois state Rep. Dan Ugaste (R-St. Charles) took to Facebook to share the FBI's 2022 Internet Crime Report, which found that Illinois was as home to the nation's 5th highest number of reported victims of cyber fraud last year.

"According to the FBI's 2022 Internet Crime Report, Illinois had the nation's 5th highest number of reported victims of cyber fraud last year," Ugaste wrote on April 3 in the post, in which he shared a story by KTVI about the statistics, which stated that Americans lost more than $10 billion to cybercrime last year.

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Illinois had the fifth-most victims per state. Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams targeting businesses and individuals performing transfers of funds, topped the list, with $83.3 million lost. Investment fraud losses totaled more than $75.6 million, and tech support scams accounted for $31.4 million lost, the story stated. Missouri was the 22nd most victimized, having listed $49.1 million to BEC scams, $29.2 million to investment fraud, and $11.4 million in tech support scams.

“A lot of these emails trying to defraud you emanate from overseas. You’ll oftentimes see typos in them because English is not the first language of the fraudster,” David Nanz, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Springfield, Illinois Office, said in the story. “All too often, we see investment fraud victims invest in something they don’t really have clarity into what it involves, and investing with someone who they don’t know, who they’ve done no due diligence with."

In the KTVI report, Nanz stressed that protecting yourself from being victimized by such scams takes both vigilance and skepticism, adding that reporting these crimes allows authorities to investigate who these scammers are, where they’re from, and how they’re operating.

“The reason we need this information is it helps us connect the dots,” he said. “When someone targets you with some sort of scam, you can be sure they’re targeting hundreds of others.”

Always try to confirm whether any seemingly official communication is legitimate, Nanz added.

“There are some simple ways to do this, which include simply calling the legitimate bank or federal government agency or whoever is purporting to actually be contacting you to confirm that the phone call or the text message or email you receive is legitimate,” he said.

“At the end of the day, all fraud boils down to this: it’s a lie to steal your money," Nanz said.