New Delhi: Investment scams accounted for more than 75 percent of the money Indians lost to cybercrimes in 2025, even as overall financial losses saw a marginal decline from the previous year, data sourced from the Ministry of Home Affairs shows.
Indians lost at least Rs 22,495 crore to cyber fraud in 2025, as compared to Rs 22,845 crore in 2024. But the number of cases went up.
A total of 28.15 lakh cases were reported in 2025, up from 22.68 lakh in 2024. Despite the rise, the number of FIRs fell to 55,484 in 2025, from 66,370 the year before. MHA sources said quicker interventions by banks and police helped block funds before complaints were formally translated into FIRs.
The data, however, signals a worrying trend—cybercrime is widening in scale. Enforcement agencies, however, manage to contain financial damage by real-time intervention, tracking account activity, and inter-agency coordination.
According to the data, of the total money lost in 2025, 76 percent was due to investment frauds, which include Ponzi schemes, fake stock market trading scams, cryptocurrency scams, among others.
“The biggest chunk of these cyberfrauds involves investment scams. This is driven by people’s desire to make easy money, which is why they fall for schemes that promise quick returns,” a source said. “
“Whether it is a scheme promising high returns, money through high-paying stocks, or even gaming, it is this greed that makes them fall into the trap and lose lakhs,” the source added.
Digital arrests, meanwhile, accounted for 9 percent of the total amount lost, followed by sextortion, which was 4 percent.
Moreover, 35 percent of the total cases reported were related to investment fraud, 19 percent sextortion and 6 percent digital arrests, among other frauds.
Police officials attribute the rise to increasingly sophisticated technology and deployment of methods such as phishing and ransomware to digital arrest scams and identity theft.
Widening state coordination
Meanwhile, the Centre says it has expanded the institutional capacity to deal with cybercrimes. The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), an office under the MHA, now focuses on coordination between states, banks and financial institutions.
Established in September 2024, IC4 launched a registry of suspected cybercriminal identifiers in collaboration with banks to aid fraud detection and prevention.
So far, banks have shared over 18.43 lakh suspect identifiers and 24.67 lakh mule bank accounts, the MHA said, in response to a question by Lok Sabha MP Delkar Kalaben Mohanbhai last December. It helped in blocking fraudulent transactions worth Rs. 8,031.56 crores, since its inception.
Separately, the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System, launched in 2021, has saved over Rs. 7,130 crores, across 23.02 lakh complaints by enabling immediate reporting.
Now, India has 459 dedicated cybercrime police stations, up from 169 in 2020, and Uttar Pradesh leads with 75 cybercrime police stations.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)