While economies the world over suffered, slowed, and effectively stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fraud economy flourished. Experts estimated that the annual global cost of fraud in 2020 would total just over $5 trillion USD—that’s more than the gross domestic product of most countries.
But those were pre-pandemic estimates, derived under pre-pandemic conditions and an old normal. Experts believe the actual total in our new COVID-concurrent reality is much higher. In some areas around the world, rates of fraud rose by nearly 20%.
The fraud economy, like any other, is vast, complex, and full of skilled operators who drive it. Cybercrime is a major contributor to the fraud economy, with e-commerce fraud as an offshoot.
In the first year of the pandemic, e-commerce sales in the U.S. rose by more than 32%, totaling $791.7 billion as businesses and consumers turned to online shopping amid lockdowns, social distancing restrictions, brick-and-mortar closures, and illness anxiety. But where there is prosperity earned honestly, there is also opportunity for bad actors to cash in.
Wicked Reports broke down state-by-state 2020 data (including Washington D.C.) from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaints Center to determine the states most harmed by non-payment and non-delivery scams in e-commerce, ranked by losses per victim. Population data as of July 1, 2021 was taken from the U.S. Census Bureau to estimate victims per 100,000 citizens for each…
