California residents reported $3.2 billion in losses to online scams aimed at individuals in 2025, more than twice the $1.5 billion reported in Texas, according to a new state ranking from the people search company Spokeo.
Population explains part of that gap, but not all of it. Adjusted for the number of residents, California lost $8.1 million per 100,000 people, the third-highest rate in the country. Texas lost $4.7 million per 100,000, which ranks 13th. On the full state rankings, California places No. 3 of 51 and Texas No. 12, where No. 1 is the most exposed.
The difference is sharpest in the size of each loss. The average complaint filed from California carried a reported loss of $36,391, the highest anywhere in the nation. In Texas, the average was $24,066. Both sit above the national figure of $21,339.
Growth tells a more mixed story. Across all internet crime reported to the FBI, California's losses rose 45% from 2024 to 2025, from $2.5 billion to $3.7 billion, according to the FBI's state-level data. Texas losses climbed 35%, from $1.4 billion to $1.8 billion. On complaint volume, Texas moved faster: its complaints jumped 57%, against a 21% rise in California.
Those year-over-year figures take in every kind of internet crime the FBI tracks, corporate schemes included. The index itself does not. It drops business email compromise, ransomware and data breach, three categories the study says mostly cost organizations rather than households, and keeps 23 crime types that chiefly target people. For business readers, that makes the index a gauge of household exposure, not corporate fraud.
The choice changes the picture in some states. West Virginia's total reported losses nearly quadrupled in 2025, from $24.2 million to $92.6 million, the biggest jump in the country. The study attributes most of that increase to business email compromise, and West Virginia still ranks 49th on the household-focused index.
Among the losses the index does count, one category dominates in both big states. Investment fraud accounted for 52% of individual-targeted losses in California and the same share in Texas. In California, that came to $1.7 billion. Rhode Island is the only place in the index where it did not top the list; card and check fraud did.
A smaller category bears watching for employers. Nationally, losses to employment scams rose 37% to $362.9 million in 2025. The study describes fake recruiters who offer easy remote work, then ask applicants to pay for training or equipment, or to deposit a check and send part of it back.
Spokeo's ranking blends four yardsticks: how often residents file complaints, how much they lose relative to population, and how the average loss compares with a month's rent and a week's wages in each state. The rent and population inputs are Census Bureau figures; wages come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
On the wage measure, the gap between the two states narrows but does not close. California's average loss equals 19.5 weeks of the state's average pay, third-highest in the nation. In Texas, the average loss equals 16.1 weeks of pay, 11th-highest. Measured in rent, Texas comes closer still: 16.3 months of median rent, against 17.3 months in California.
Texans filed complaints at a lower rate, 195.7 per 100,000 residents, which ranks 32nd. Californians filed 222.9 per 100,000, ranking 19th.
Neither state's numbers point toward relief. Both closed 2025 with more complaints and more money lost than the year before.
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