The Evolving Landscape of Business Email Compromise Litigation — A Focus on Texas

Business email compromises (BECs) remain one of the most prevalent internet-related crimes, with businesses and individuals suffering massive financial losses — the scale of which has only risen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Between 2019 and 2021, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (the IC3) reported 63,098 BEC complaints, with adjusted losses exceeding $5.9 billion. According to IC3 report statistics from 2019 to 2021, Texas reported the second-highest number of BECs of any state, while the amount lost almost doubled—from $124 million in 2019 to over $233 million in 2021. While the amount of damage caused by BECs varies widely, some particularly damaging BECs have cost the victims upwards of $10 million, according to internet security firm Tessian.