According to the FBI’s most recent annual report on online crime, out of all the fraud categories, cryptocurrency-related schemes caused the most number of reported losses last year.
Americans reported losses of around $21 billion last year, and the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 1,008,597 complaints in 2025, up from 859,532 in 2024.
Crypto scams accounted for almost half of the $20.877 billion overall losses reported by IC3, with over $11.366 billion in losses described as being tied to cryptocurrencies. Additionally, out of the almost one million complaints received last year, 181,565 were classified as being connected to cryptocurrencies.
With $7.2 billion in reported losses, the yearly report revealed that cryptocurrency investment fraud was the largest cause of financial losses for Americans in 2025.
Scammers usually start cryptocurrency investment schemes through social media, text messaging, ads, or dating sites. They introduce the victims to investing groups by posing as informed industry insiders.
In order to encourage higher investments, victims are then persuaded to send cryptocurrencies to phony investment scam platforms or applications, where they are presented fictitious returns or given loans. As the con artists try one last time to take advantage of them before vanishing with the victims’ money, they will be charged taxes and fees when they attempt to withdraw their money. Recovery scams that promise to assist victims in getting their lost money may also target victims. Because they can cause victims to suffer severe loss and emotional pain, these frauds are frequently devastating, according to the report.
The FBI started Operation Level Up at the beginning of 2024 in an effort to proactively find and notify victims of cryptocurrency investment fraud. The effort has contacted over 8,000 victims since its commencement and has cut losses by almost $500 million, according to the report.
78% of the 3,780 victims of cryptocurrency investment fraud that it reported in 2025 were not aware that they were being conned. In addition to the projected $225 million in victim savings, 38 victims of those frauds were referred to a victim specialist for suicide intervention, who stayed in touch with them until local law enforcement showed up.
Preventing a victim from cashing out $750,000 from his 401(k) retirement plan, preventing a victim from selling her home to invest $500,000, and preventing a victim from getting a loan to send $400,000 to the con artist are a few instances of losses that were avoided.
The report claimed that there were many occasions in which the FBI acted through the Financial Fraud Kill Chain (FFKC) to reverse wire transfers and restore payments to victims.
The surge in losses related to crypto investment scams prompted the formation of the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Columbia Scam Center Strike Force, which merged the resources of the U.S. Attorney’s Office with the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, the FBI and the Secret Service to track down and disrupt those scams.
In order to bring Chinese organized crime affiliates operating in Cambodia, Laos, and Burma to justice, the Scam Center Strike Force is looking into scam compounds in Southeast Asia, identifying and pursuing key leaders.
In order to stop those scams from being used as weapons against Americans, it is also attempting to confiscate and disable U.S.-based infrastructure and facilities, like as social media accounts and internet service providers, that offer the way and means to carry them out.
