The Federal Bureau of Investigation ranked Nigeria 16th place and 2nd highest in Africa after South Africa in its 2020 International Victim Countries.
The FBI disclosed this in its 2020 Internet Crime Report released this week.
The top 20 countries ranked in the International Victim Countries include United Kingdom, Canada, India, Greece, Australia, South Africa, France, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Philippines, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, China, Colombia and Hong Kong.
The FBI Deputy Director, Paul Abatte said criminals in 2020 “used phishing, spoofing, extortion, and various types of Internet-enabled fraud to target the most vulnerable in our society – medical workers searching for personal protective equipment, families looking for information about stimulus checks to help pay bills, and many others.”
He added:
- The Internet Crime Complaint Center (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% increase in total complaints from 2019. Business E-mail Compromise (BEC) 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.
The FBI added that IC3 worked with its partners to successfully freeze approximately $380 million of the $462 million in reported losses in 2020, representing a success rate of nearly 82%.
What you should know
- The IC3 was established as a centre to receive complaints of Internet crime. A total of 5,679,259 complaints have been reported to the IC3 since its inception.
- Since 2015, the IC3 has received an average of 440,000 complaints per year. These complaints address a wide array of Internet scams affecting victims across the globe.
- Recall Nairametrics also reported that the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2020 report published by Transparency International indicates that Nigeria occupies the 149th position out of the 180 countries surveyed as well scored 25 out of 100 points.
