Finns lose €32.4m through digital scams in 2022

The increase in digital scams continued during 2022 and Finns lost a total of EUR 32.4 million to fraudsters last year, said National Police Board in a press release on Wednesday.

The sum lost might have been a great deal higher if banks and authorities had not prevented a total of EUR 14.5 million from being transferred into the hands of fraudsters.

In 2022, the sums lost by Finns included a total of EUR 9 million to scam letters and romance scams, EUR 4.9 million to CEO frauds and EUR 8.5 million to investment scams.

The biggest sums, a total of EUR 10 million, were lost to fake police scams and various types of phishing.

Monetary losses to scams in these categories were almost four times higher in July–December than they had been in January–June 2022. More money was also lost to other types of scams in July–December.

Bank statistics on scams do not include all types of scams. Moreover, statistics do not show cases where the victim chooses not to report the scam to their bank or to report it as a crime to the police.

There is no clear information on the number of unreported cases or on the criminal gains from them. One of the messages of the campaign Watch out, verify, warn others is that anyone can fall prey to a scam, said police.