Americans reported $11.4 billion in losses related to cryptocurrency scams last year, up 22% from 2024, highlighting the growing scale of digital asset fraud, an FBI report revealed Tuesday.
“Cryptocurrency investment scams are sophisticated, long-term scams that use psychological manipulation, the appearance of legitimacy, and the exploitation of cryptocurrencies to trick victims into investing large sums of money,” the report says.
The report also says that the majority of crypto scams are perpetrated by organized criminal enterprises based in Southeast Asia that exploit human trafficking victims as forced labor to run operations.
Cryptoanalysis firm Chainalysis published a report in January revealing that up to $17 billion in cryptocurrency was lost worldwide due to scams and fraud in 2025. Phishing, cryptocurrency exchange impostors, and AI-generated scams against individuals were gradually overtaking losses from cyberattacks as the top methods criminals used to steal digital assets, according to the Crypto Crime Report.
The FBI noted in its report that the number of victims increased significantly. In 2025, there were 181,565 cryptocurrency-related complaints, an increase of 21%. The average damage per case was $62,604, highlighting how victims are often drawn into schemes that extract substantial amounts rather than small sums, the office said.
The losses are also highly concentrated. Nearly 18,600 whistleblowers each lost more than $100,000, suggesting that many victims are losing life-changing amounts, including savings and retirement funds.
More broadly, crypto scams are now at the center of a broader rise in online fraud. Americans filed more than 1 million cybercrime reports in 2025, resulting in losses exceeding $20.8 billion. Frauds and scams accounted for the overwhelming majority of those losses, reflecting what the FBI describes as a rapidly evolving threat landscape.
