Americans reported losing $11.37 billion to scams and fraud linked to cryptocurrency and other digital assets in 2025, according to the FBI’s IC3 annual report published on Monday. The figure was 22 percent higher compared to 2024.
The FBI’s complaint center recorded 181,565 complaints related to crypto over the year, which is a 21 percent increase from 2024.
Reported losses averaged around $62,600 per victim, and nearly 18,600 people claimed they were defrauded out of more than $100,000.
These new figures show how closely tied cryptocurrency is to online fraud in the United States.
The FBI report highlighted that cryptocurrency came up frequently in the complaints, with losses related to it surpassing those for any other category mentioned.
Overall, IC3 received over 1 million complaints last year and reported total losses of $20.88 billion. This means that cases involving crypto made up more than half of all reported losses.
Investment scams remained the biggest threat
The FBI reported that cryptocurrency investment fraud caused the most damage. This type of fraud alone resulted in $7.2 billion in reported losses last year, making it the largest source of financial losses for Americans in the report.
The FBI said most of these scams are not quick.
Scammers spend time gaining a victim’s trust, then use pressure and emotional tricks to make them send larger amounts of money.
They often reach victims first through text messages, social media, online ads, or dating apps, the report said.
After that, they move the chat to private apps and start talking like investment experts. They tell victims they know how to make money through crypto or even gold.
Victims see fake profits on fake platforms and are sometimes pushed to invest more through fabricated fees, loans, taxes, or charges when they try to withdraw money. In many cases, the money becomes unrecoverable.
The FBI reported that many of these cryptocurrency investment scams are run by organized crime groups in Southeast Asia. The report also states that some of these operations use human trafficking victims as forced labor in scam centers.
“Cryptocurrency Investment Scams are sophisticated long-term scams using psychological manipulation, the appearance of legitimacy, and exploitation of cryptocurrencies to deceive victims into investing large sums of money,” FBI stated.
“These scams are largely perpetrated by organized criminal enterprises based in Southeast Asia using victims of human trafficking as forced labor to run the scam operations,” the law enforcement agency added.
Older Americans struck hardest
The age breakdown in the report shows that people aged 60 and older faced the largest reported losses by a significant margin. That group filed 44,555 crypto-related complaints and reported about $4.43 billion in losses.
People aged 50 to 59 reported the second-highest losses at approximately $2.14 billion, while the 40 to 49 group followed with $1.55 billion.
Younger age groups also reported considerable losses, but the amounts were much lower. Americans under 20 filed 3,508 complaints related to cryptocurrency and reported nearly $27 million in losses.
The FBI’s chart on crypto-linked complaints shows the problem has grown sharply over the past several years.
Reported losses tied to cryptocurrency rose from millions of dollars in 2017 to over $11 billion last year. At the same time, complaint numbers climbed to a new high.
What the FBI is doing
The FBI has also tried to stop the damage earlier. In early 2024, it launched Operation Level Up to warn people about suspected crypto investment scams before they send any money.
The program has notified more than 8,000 people and helped prevent over $500 million in losses.
A new Scam Center Strike Force, led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, targets criminal groups running scam operations from Southeast Asia.
The IC3 also runs a Recovery Asset Team that works with banks to freeze fraudulent transactions. Last year, this team helped freeze $679 million out of $1.16 billion in attempted fraudulent transfers, which is a 58 percent success rate.
Recently, blockchain security firm CertiK reported that losses from crypto ATM scams in the United States increased by 33 percent to around $333 million in the last year.
CertiK noted that scammers are now increasingly using artificial intelligence to create deepfake audio and video that mimic trusted individuals, such as bank officials and even family members.