Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series about an increase in scams throughout northern Illinois.

In McHenry County, a Crystal Lake woman believed a caller who said she was her granddaughter and had been in a serious accident and needed thousands of dollars for an attorney.

A Huntley man believed he was talking to a young woman on a dating site, only to be scammed out of thousands of dollars – and a set of hubcaps – allegedly by an Elgin man.

In DeKalb County, people reported losing hundreds of dollars after believing they were paying a real estate agent for an application fee to rent or buy a home. It does not cost money to fill out such an application.

These are three examples of internet scams, a sampling of reports the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center collects.

In the 25 years since the FBI created the IC3 hub, where victims can report internet scams, the number of complaints has grown from a few thousand per month to 3,000 per day, according to the FBI’s IC3 2025 annual report.

Although specific numbers for northern Illinois are not available, the state of Illinois follows the growing national trend, FBI officials said.

IC3 has received millions of reports of cyber-enabled crimes, including cryptocurrency, credit card and check fraud, government impersonation and employment and romance scams, according to the annual report.

For the year 2025 alone, the IC3 reported that the financial loss to the public was more than $20 billion. More often than not, the victims are 60 and older.

Yet, that doesn’t show the true number of people who are victimized by scammers. That’s because not all victims know where to report a scam, are embarrassed to do so or fear retaliation.

Because of those factors, the IC3 report “only captures a fraction of the actual fraud,” said Gabrielle Szlenkier, public affairs officer for the FBI Chicago Field Office.

A closer look

In 2023, an elderly Crystal Lake woman was scammed out of a total of $50,000: $30,000 in cash and $20,000 in bitcoin.

The woman believed a man who contacted her and told her that her Social Security was compromised, court records show.

To avoid losing more money, she was instructed to move $30,000 in cash to a “safe account,” which she did. However, the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office investigated and learned the money actually went into a bank in China. In another leg of the scam, the man finagled the woman into giving him $20,000 in bitcoin, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors who have handled such cases in McHenry County said the scammer needs only one person.

“All the scammer needs is one of out of 50″ to take the bait, and the unassuming victim can quickly be out thousands of dollars, McHenry County Assistant State’s Attorney William Bruce said in a recent Shaw Local story.

And, it seems there are no lows too low for the scammers to go.

In 2023, an 83-year-old Crystal Lake woman received a phone call from an unknown number. On the other end was a woman claiming to be her granddaughter who lives in Texas. She sounded like her and spoke with a sense of urgency, the victim told Shaw Local. The “granddaughter” said she had been in an accident, had seriously injured someone and needed money for a lawyer.

A series of urgent calls followed, each with details making her “granddaughter’s” circumstances more grave, including one from a man claiming to be an attorney.

Instructions then followed about how to send the money to help her. Eventually, the woman went to her bank and wrote and cashed a check for about $16,000, despite the teller questioning the situation. The woman, as instructed, did not tell the teller about the phone calls. The woman said she demanded the teller cash her check and told her, “I’m OK. I know what I am doing.”

Then, as instructed, she sat on her porch with the cash in a box and waited for a man to come and pick it up. A man showed up on foot, took the box with the cash and walked away.

But this wasn’t the end of the granddaughter-in-distress scam.

The supposed lawyer called again, upping the seriousness of her “granddaughter’s” situation and told the woman to mail a box with $50,000 cash to an address in Florida. But this time the victim spoke to her daughter, who said her granddaughter was fine.

The perpetrators were never identified, and no one was ever charged.

“I never thought that would happen to me,” the woman said.

Reported cases indicate perpetrators are working locally as well as overseas, and no variation of a scam or targeted victim, regardless of age or gender, is off limits.

In DeKalb County, Judah Sameth, the designated managing broker and owner of Willow Real Estate in Sycamore, said people seeking housing are often the victims of scammers.

Those scams often involve a request for an application fee before a potential buyer or renter can see the property. When the victims arrive at the home’s address – if they ever receive one from the scammers – they realize the property is listed by a licensed real estate group, while their line of communication with the contact they actually paid money to goes silent.

“I’ve had people crying to me that they gave them their last 250 bucks because they’re so desperate to get into a house,” Sameth said.

Sameth warned that being asked for “cash up-front should be the big sign to people” that a scam may be afoot and the supposed seller is a fraud.

As technology evolves, so do the scams, said investigators in Lake and McHenry counties who spoke to Shaw Local.

Another quite popular con is the romance or “sweetheart scam,” which typically involves an offender building trust over time, then asking for money, investigators said.

“Scammers lurk in online dating apps and on social media, too,” according to the Federal Trade Commission website. “These scams might also involve an investment: your new love interest might boast about being rich and offer to help you get started in crypto investing. Don’t do it – those ‘investments’ go straight into their pockets.”

• Part 2: Saturday’s installment of this two-part series will highlight authorities’ tips for avoiding scams.