The figures are from the Federal Trade Commission, which noted that losses in many top categories of frauds spiked in 2020 compared to a year earlier. According to the FTC, online shopping scams rose 129 percent; business impostor frauds, 88 percent; investment frauds, 84 percent; romance scams, 66 percent; tech-support scams, 55 percent; sweepstakes and related frauds, 35 percent and family and friend impostors, 20 percent.
Losses in two categories — timeshare sales and timeshare resales — inched upward by 3 percent year-over-year, and in one top category, government impostor frauds, losses declined by 5 percent.
