On Sept. 24, 2008, then-President George W. Bush addressed a worried nation.
“Our economy is facing a moment of great challenge,” Bush said, “but we’ve overcome tough challenges before, and we will overcome this one.”
The country was indeed facing a great challenge in the form of the Great Recession, which started in December 2007 and ran to June 2009, the longest economic downturn since World War II.
Real gross domestic product was falling while unemployment was soaring, hitting a peak of 10% in October 2009.
But something else was climbing right along with unemployment: fraud.
At the height of the recession in 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ Internet Crime Complaints Center received 336,655 complaints of online crime, up 22.3% from the previous year.
Total monetary losses came to around $559.7 million, more than double the 2008 total.
Intense Financial Pressure
After the recession ended, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners released the results of a survey which concluded that intense financial pressure during the economic crisis led to an increase in fraud, according to SEON, an online fraud prevention platform.
In the years following the economic downturn, there was a consistent decline in the number of complaints of online crime. In 2013, that figure was around 262,813.
From 2014 to 2018 the number of complaints to the FBI increased each year, SEON said, with the total recorded number of complaints in 2018 reaching 351,938 — around 15,283 more than…
