MANILA, PHILIPPINES — The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) received 10,004 online scam complaints in 2024.
That’s over three times the 3,317 complaints the agency received in 2023.
READ: Scam Watch Pilipinas, CICC earn global cybersecurity award
In 2024, cybercrime victims lost nearly ₱198 million, the first-ever statistics on losses that the CICC released.
CICC Executive Director Alexander Ramos explained the growing cybercrime awareness and willingness to report led to the triple increase.
“In previous years, people were not aware that they were being scammed, and many were not also aware of where to file their complaints,” he said.
“We also owe this to our partners who have been encouraging the public to report to our hotline or through other channels and platforms,” Ramos added.
Aside from scam complaints, the CICC gave the following information:
- Consumer fraud accounted for 3,534 or 35% of total complaints received.
- Consumer fraud included non-delivery of goods and services (86%) and fake advertisements (8%).
- Online fraud accounted for 3,242 or 32% of the total.
- Online fraud covered financial fraud (957), impersonification (920), job scams (396), investment scams (396) and love scams (72).
- Other types of complaints included unsolicited communication, illegal access, identity theft, sexual cybercrime, phishing and cyber libel.
- GCash was the top wallet that victims used in the consumer fraud, online fraud and phishing recordings. In addition, they recorded a total loss of ₱76.4 million.
- Online scam victims also used BPI, GoTyme and Maya. Their users recorded total losses of ₱28.4 million, ₱15.3 million and ₱13.9 million.
The CICC reminds the public to report their online scam complaints to the Inter-Agency Response Center (IARC).
You may call their toll-free hotline 1326, which operates 24/7 from Mondays to Sundays, including holidays.
