The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) received a total of 10,004 cybercrime complaints in 2024, more than three times the 3,317 complaints received by the agency in 2023.
The total amount lost by cybercrime victims in 2024 reached almost ₽ 198 million, the first ever statistics on actual losses to cybercrime released by the agency.
CICC Executive Director Alexander K. Ramos attributed the exponential increase in complaints to the growing cybercrime awareness of the public and their willingness to report.
“In previous years, people were not aware that they were being scammed and many were not also aware on 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.
Based on the CICC complaints statistics, consumer fraud accounted for 3,534 or 35 percent of the total complaints received. These included non-delivery of goods or services (86 percent) and fake advertisement (8 percent).
Complaints on online fraud accounted for 3,242 or 32 percent. These figure included financial fraud (957), impersonification (920), job scam (396), investment scam (396), and love scam (72).
Other types of complaints received included unsolicited communication, illegal access, identity theft, sexual cybercrime, phishing and cyber libel.
The CICC statistics show that Gcash was the top wallet used by victims of consumer fraud, online fraud and phishing recording a loss of P76.49 million. Other financial platforms used by victims included BPI (P28.47 million) , Gotyme (P15.38 million) and Paymaya (P13.99 million).
Victims of scams are advised to call the Inter-Agency Response Center (IARC) hotline 1326 which is toll-free and operates round-the-clock from Mondays to Sundays including holidays.
Issued by the Office of Executive Director Alexander K. Ramos
