Methodology
The Scam Atlas is for informational and educational purposes only and is not legal, financial, or law-enforcement advice.
Taxonomy
The atlas sorts scams into 11 families and 70 types, plus 12delivery techniques that cut across families (email phishing, smishing, vishing, ClickFix, and others). Where a matching category exists, each type is crosswalked to the categories used by the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the FTC, UK Finance, and Scamwatch, and to MITRE ATT&CK technique IDs, so a reader can match a type to the official figures that cover it.
Source tiers
- Tier A (primary):a court record, a regulator, a law enforcement agency (for example DOJ, FBI and IC3 public service announcements, the NCA, police forces, Europol), an SEC filing, or the affected organisation's own disclosure.
- Tier B (supporting): a major news outlet or a named vendor research team.
Every case needs a Tier A source or a written note explaining why none exists. A case supported only by Tier B sources carries that note, and its page shows the badge "Unconfirmed by a primary source".
Naming people
- Defendants are named only as the primary source names them.
- Anyone who was under 18 at the time of the alleged offence is not named.
- Victims who were minors are not named, and private individual victims are never named.
- Charged and alleged cases use allegation wording ("charged with", "alleged to have"). They are allegations until proven in court.
Figures
Figures are dated and linked to their source. Reported figures come from the agencies that collect complaints. Survey-based figures are estimates, and every estimate is labelled as estimated. The IC3 cryptocurrency and AI figures describe complaints that already appear in IC3's crime-type figures, so they are never summed with them. Figures shown on a scam type page are for the reporting category that type falls under, not for that type alone.
Update cadence
National reports (IC3, FTC, UK Finance, ACCC) are added once a year when each is published. Cases are added once they are sourced, and those without a primary source are marked, as described above. A quarterly trend report summarises what the data shows.
Corrections
To report an error, use the contact page or email hello@guptadeepak.com. Every data change, including corrections, is recorded in the changelog.
Citation
Please cite the primary source for each figure; the source link sits next to every number.