Bank of America opened a new round of fraud education for small-business owners on October 6, pointing to an FBI figure: $20.8 billion in internet crime losses reported by Americans in 2025. The bank says the total is up 26 percent from the year before and that business email compromise, a scam in which criminals pose as a vendor or executive to redirect a payment, accounted for more than $3 billion of it. The advice is the bank’s, but the numbers under it come from the FBI, and they show where the money went.
The announcement came out of Charlotte, North Carolina, and centers on the Security Center inside the bank’s Center for Business Empowerment, a resource site for business clients. It carries an updated fraud prevention checklist, material on the warning signs of fraud, a webinar on social engineering and business email compromise scheduled for fall 2026, educational sessions on the bank’s CashPro business platform, and a tool the bank calls the Security Meter. The bank says it supports about four million small-business households, so the audience for the material is large.
The people most exposed are owners and bookkeepers who pay invoices by wire or electronic transfer and take instructions by email. Anyone who pays vendors that way now has a reason to ask how a changed bank detail would be confirmed before money moves. The FBI data shows the losses arrive through ordinary-looking requests, and the bank says many of the scams succeed because criminals exploit trust and urgency rather than any gap in technology.
Fraud totals and the dates for new scam warnings keep changing; The Retirement Money Brief sends the ones that matter, one email each weekday.
Get the free deadline brief → Free from RetireShield. Unsubscribe anytime.
What the FBI counted in 2025
The figure comes from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, known as IC3, which takes reports from victims. Its 2025 annual report counts 1,008,597 complaints and $20.877 billion in losses, a 26 percent rise from 2024. That works out to an average loss of $20,699 per complaint, according to the report. The total covers everyone who filed with the FBI, not only businesses, so the bank’s number measures the whole country rather than its own customers.
Business email compromise ranks second by dollars in the report, at $3.047 billion. Investment fraud ranks first by a wide margin at $8.648 billion. Tech and customer support scams follow at $2.135 billion, personal data breaches at $1.315 billion, and confidence and romance schemes at $929 million. The ranking explains why the bank chose email fraud as the focus for business owners, even though the largest dollar category sits in a different part of the report.
Losses among people 60 and older
The same FBI report breaks out victims by age, and the older group stands out. Complainants 60 and older filed 201,266 complaints, a 37 percent increase from 2024, and lost $7.748 billion, up 59 percent. Their average loss was $38,500, and 12,444 of them lost more than $100,000. Losses in that age group grew faster than the national total, which rose 26 percent.
Within the older group, the biggest dollar loss was investment fraud at $3.519 billion. Tech support scams cost $1.041 billion and confidence and romance schemes $584 million. By number of complaints, phishing and spoofing came first, at 48,064, meaning fake messages and websites that impersonate a trusted company. The FBI also publishes state-by-state elder fraud breakdowns for readers who want local figures.
The FBI report also describes a way money can come back. Its Recovery Asset Team works with banks through the Financial Fraud Kill Chain, a process for freezing stolen transfers. The team started 3,900 incidents involving $1.163 billion in attempted theft and froze $679 million, a 58 percent success rate. Of those, 3,574 were domestic cases that froze $507 million, and 326 were international cases that froze $171.9 million.
What the bank is offering
Sharon Miller, president of Business Banking at Bank of America, said in the October 6 announcement that “fraudsters continue to evolve their tactics, making awareness and education more important than ever for business owners.” She added that “many scams succeed not because a business lacks technology, but because criminals exploit trust, urgency and human behavior.”
The bank also reports that 30 percent of business owners plan to increase their cybersecurity spending. The release gives no dollar amount for that spending and does not say how many of the bank’s own business clients have been hit by fraud. The press materials are education, not a new protection or refund policy, and the bank did not announce any change in what it covers when a business loses money to a scam.
Reporting a fraud to the FBI
A business or individual hit by an online scam can file a report at the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, which describes itself as the main intake form for cyber-enabled fraud and cybercrime. The site notes that it cannot respond to every complaint because of volume, but each report helps investigators see patterns and may be referred to law enforcement. The $20.8 billion total is built from those complaints, so it counts only losses that someone reported.
The FBI’s freeze process works with banks, and the report counts it in the Recovery Asset Team’s results. The 58 percent freeze rate applies to the 3,900 incidents the team took up, not to every scam reported to the FBI.
The bank’s checklist and webinar are education, and the FBI’s report is the count of what was lost. The numbers that stand out in the FBI report are the 59 percent jump in losses among people 60 and older and the $3.047 billion lost to email-based payment fraud. Neither has an obvious ceiling, and the 2026 totals will not be known until the FBI publishes next year’s report.
More Financial Reading
- How many CDs can you park at 1 bank? FDIC rules you must know
- Adding someone to your bank account: tax traps and smart moves
- What really happens to your joint savings account when you die?
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview’s editorial team.
