Theft statistics: what the official data shows

Property crime and reporting

The single most important fact about theft statistics is that most theft never enters them. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal Victimization, 2024 found that only 30.5% of property crimes were reported to police in 2024. Reporting depends on what was taken: 75.0% of motor vehicle thefts were reported, but only 25.4% of other thefts. U.S. households experienced 13,069,560 property victimizations that year, a rate of 97.6 per 1,000 households, down from 102.2 in 2023.

Newer survey methods suggest even those figures understate the problem. In Victimization Estimates from the Redesigned NCVS Instrument, 2024, BJS measured property crime at 127.6 per 1,000 households, 31% higher than the legacy questionnaire's 97.6, and found only 25.0% of property crimes reported. Risk is also uneven. The BJS Property Crime key findings for 2023 put urban households at 192.3 property victimizations per 1,000, against 98.1 for suburban and 56.5 for rural households.

The practical reading is simple. Police-recorded totals describe reported crime, not all crime, and the gap is largest for ordinary theft of personal property.

Recovery rates

Recovery rates by type of property are rarely published, which makes the few that exist especially useful. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation reported a 25.4% overall recovery rate in 2024, rising to 53.5% for vehicles and accessories and falling to 7.5% for electronics and 1.2% for currency, ID and information. Arkansas Department of Public Safety figures show the same shape: 22.29% overall, 61.84% for automobiles and 14.53% for firearms.

Bicycles fall between the extremes. A peer-reviewed survey, Patterns in Bike Theft and Recovery, found that only 15% of stolen bicycles were recovered. The common thread is identification. Property with a unique, recorded identifier and a registration system, such as a vehicle, comes back far more often than property without one.

Vehicle theft

Vehicle theft has fallen sharply from its recent peak. NICB counted 659,880 vehicles stolen in 2025, down 23% from 2024, according to an Insurance Journal report on the NICB release. State data tells the same story. The Texas DMV Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority recorded 78,677 motor vehicle thefts in calendar 2025, down from 126,241 in 2023, and the California Highway Patrol recorded 176,230 vehicle thefts in 2024, down 13.14%.

Vehicles are also the most frequently recovered stolen property. California's 2024 recovery rate was 84.59%. Dollar-based measures run lower: the Maryland Vehicle Theft Prevention Council reported that 55.0% of $343,387,922 in reported theft value was recovered in 2023, a year in which Maryland vehicle thefts rose 99%. A recovered vehicle is not always an undamaged one, which may help explain the difference between unit and dollar recovery rates.

Domain and website theft

Domain theft has no official national count, but the regulator's own records offer a floor. ICANN Contractual Compliance transfer-related metrics show 780 complaints of unauthorized inter-registrar transfers from September 2020 through October 2023, and 205 complaints of unauthorized change of registrant (the reassignment of who owns a domain) over the same period. ICANN does not track hijacking as its own category, and the document's printed total row (988) does not match the sum of those two rows (985), so the two figures are cited separately.

Compromised websites are also turned into criminal infrastructure. The Interisle Consulting Group 2025 phishing study found that one in three .COM and .NET domains reported for phishing was a compromised, legitimate domain rather than one registered by criminals. Its counts of 1,542,922 phishing domains, of which 1,192,794 were maliciously registered, imply roughly 350,000 compromised domains; that is our derived figure, not one the study states. Defenses remain uncommon even at large companies: CSC, 2024-2025 Domain Security Report found registry lock adoption among Forbes Global 2000 companies at 24% in 2024, a vendor figure from a company that sells registry lock.

Account takeover and SIM swap

Reported SIM swap losses in the United States have dropped steeply. The FBI IC3 2025 Internet Crime Report counted 971 SIM swap complaints in 2025 with $17,366,758 in reported losses, down from 1,075 complaints and $48,798,103 in 2023. The FBI IC3 2024 Internet Crime Report shows 2,026 complaints and $72,652,571 in losses in 2022. One group runs against that trend: victims aged 60 and over filed 222 SIM swap complaints in 2025, up from 174 in 2023.

The FBI's new account takeover category, approximately 4,700 complaints with $359.7 million in losses in 2025, covers financial accounts largely tied to scammers impersonating bank support staff. For social media and other personal accounts, the Identity Theft Resource Center, 2025 Trends in Identity Report found that social media made up 19% of existing accounts taken over, and reports involving personal tech accounts such as Apple and Google rose 754%. That sample is victims who contacted ITRC, not a representative survey.

Identity theft and fraud

Complaint volumes for identity theft and fraud remain very high. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024 recorded 1,135,291 identity theft reports in 2024, 17.5% of all reports, with credit card fraud the leading type. In 2025 consumers reported $15.9 billion in fraud losses to the FTC, according to the FTC prepared statement to the Joint Economic Committee. The FBI received 1,008,597 internet crime complaints with $20.877 billion in losses in 2025, and cryptocurrency was involved in 181,565 complaints and $11.366 billion of those losses.

Survey data again shows how much goes unreported. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, Victims of Identity Theft, 2021 estimated that 23.9 million people, about 9% of U.S. residents age 16 or older, experienced identity theft in 2021, yet only about 7% reported it to police. The same survey offers realistic expectations: 56% of victims resolved their problems in one day or less.

Data limitations

Every theft statistic answers a narrower question than its headline suggests. Four limits apply throughout this page.

• Complaint data counts filers, not victims. FBI IC3, FTC and ICANN figures count people who chose to file with that agency. A fall in complaints can reflect less crime, less reporting or reporting elsewhere.
• Survey data estimates, but lags. BJS surveys capture unreported crime, but the latest identity theft edition covers 2021, and the redesigned survey changes the baseline.
• Vendor research has a stake. Studies from CSC, Infoblox and similar firms often measure what no agency measures, but the publishers sell related products. We label them as vendor research.
• UK data is not US data. Unauthorized SIM swaps reported to the UK National Fraud Database rose 1,055% in 2024, according to Cifas, Fraudscape 2025, and a further 38% in 2025, according to Cifas, Fraudscape 2026 Report. Those figures describe the United Kingdom only.

Small samples deserve the same care. The Identity Theft Resource Center, 2026 Trends in Identity Report finding that stolen phones and tablets led to account takeover in every case rests on 14 individuals. The table below lists every statistic in our research file with its source, year and caveat, so each figure can be read on its own terms. Public crime data can also be explored directly through the FBI Crime Data Explorer.

Every statistic, with its source document

Each figure below was confirmed by opening the source document itself. The year is the publication year of the document, which can differ from the year the data covers.

Domain Name and Website Theft

Account Takeover and SIM Swapping

Vehicle and Property Theft

Identity Theft and Fraud