The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, has released its 2025 annual report, and the numbers point to a sharp escalation in crypto-related crime across the United States. According to the report, cryptocurrency fraud drained more than $11.366 billion from American victims in 2025. That amount represented more than half of all reported cybercrime losses nationwide and marked the heaviest loss category tracked by the Bureau.
IC3 recorded 1,008,597 complaints during the year, with combined losses of $20.877 billion, up 26% from 2024. Within that broader total, the crypto descriptor accounted for 181,565 complaints and $11.366 billion in losses. The scale of the increase becomes even more striking over time: the report notes that crypto fraud losses were only about $27 million in 2017. By 2025, that figure had grown by more than 400 times.
The report suggests that cryptocurrency is no longer merely an occasional tool used by online scammers. Instead, it has become a central payment and transfer mechanism across a wide range of fraud schemes. Fast settlement, borderless movement, and the difficulty of recovering funds after transfer have made digital assets especially attractive to criminal operators.
Crypto investment scams became the biggest source of harm
At the center of the FBI’s findings is crypto investment fraud. The Bureau describes these schemes as long-running operations built on psychological manipulation, a false appearance of legitimacy, and the use of cryptocurrency to convince victims to send increasingly large amounts of money. Unlike one-off thefts, these scams are usually staged over time and often rely on repeated trust-building.
In 2025 alone, crypto investment fraud generated $7.2 billion in reported losses, making it the single largest source of financial damage to Americans for the year. The pattern is now highly recognizable. Criminals typically initiate contact through text messages, social media platforms, dating apps, or digital advertisements. The approach may seem casual at first, but the end goal is to move the victim into a controlled environment where the scam can deepen.
Victims are often introduced to what appear to be exclusive investment communities, private groups, or insider-led trading circles. These groups may feature fake analysts, fabricated success stories, and screenshots of supposed profits. From there, targets are instructed to buy cryptocurrency and transfer it to fraudulent platforms that display entirely fabricated balances, trading gains, or portfolio growth.
Many of these fake platforms are designed to keep victims engaged. Some even offer fake credit lines or loans to encourage larger deposits. Once a victim attempts to withdraw, the tone changes quickly. The scammers claim that taxes, release fees, security deposits, or compliance charges must be paid first. After extracting as much as possible, they disappear, taking both the original deposits and any imagined gains shown on the platform.
The FBI says these operations are often tied to organized criminal enterprises in Southeast Asia, especially in Cambodia, Laos, and Burma. The report also links many scam centers to human trafficking, noting that trafficked individuals are sometimes forced to work inside these compounds and help run the fraud operations.
Crypto has become a standard payment method across fraud categories
The FBI’s report makes clear that the role of cryptocurrency extends well beyond investment scams. Across multiple forms of fraud, digital assets are increasingly the payment method of choice. Scammers may not always be selling a crypto investment, but they are very often asking victims to pay in crypto.
The numbers show how widespread this shift has become. Cryptocurrency was used in 72% of investment fraud transactions, 43% of tech support scam transactions, and 40% of government impersonation scheme payments. That pattern indicates standardization: scammers across different criminal categories increasingly rely on crypto because it is fast, difficult to reverse, and easier to move across jurisdictions.
In broader category terms, investment fraud as a whole reached $8.648 billion in losses during 2025, with the crypto component accounting for the largest share. Tech support scams involving digital assets generated another $1.226 billion in losses. This means crypto’s role in fraud is not limited to fake exchanges or fake token sales. It is also deeply embedded in social engineering schemes that pressure victims into paying supposed service, compliance, or emergency charges.
For policymakers and investigators, this distinction matters. The challenge is not only about one token, one blockchain, or one platform. It is also about how crypto has become a generalized settlement rail for online fraud, allowing criminal groups to receive, split, and move funds with speed once a victim converts cash into digital assets.
Older Americans suffered the highest losses
Among all age groups, Americans aged 60 and older suffered the greatest harm. The FBI said this group filed 44,555 crypto-related complaints and reported $4.43 billion in losses, more than any other age bracket. Within the crypto investment fraud subcategory alone, people in this age group lost $2.76 billion, compared with $1.38 billion among those aged 50 to 59.
The report also highlighted crypto ATM and kiosk scams, a form of fraud in which criminals direct victims to physical machines and ask them to send funds by scanning QR codes. In 2025, this subcategory produced 13,460 complaints and $389 million in losses, representing a 58% increase in losses from 2024.
Older victims again bore the majority of the burden. Americans aged 60 and above filed 6,188 of those crypto ATM complaints and accounted for $257.5 million in losses, or roughly 66% of the total. These scams often overlap with government impersonation, bank fraud alerts, or urgent account-security narratives that pressure victims into acting quickly and without consulting others.
Another major category was recovery scams. In these schemes, fraudsters target people who were already victimized in previous crypto scams and promise to recover frozen funds or reclaim lost assets. They then demand upfront payments for legal processing, taxes, tracing services, or release fees. In 2025, recovery scams generated 10,516 complaints and $1.4 billion in losses. The 60-plus group once again suffered the most, losing $540.5 million in this category alone.
Taken together, these figures show that older victims are often not only more exposed to first-stage fraud but also more vulnerable to secondary exploitation after the initial loss. Once their information enters criminal networks, they may be approached again and again under new identities and new promises.
How the FBI and U.S. agencies are responding
The Bureau says it has not remained passive as losses continue to climb. One of its main responses is Operation Level Up, launched in January 2024. The initiative uses IC3 complaint data to identify people who may still be in the middle of crypto investment scams and warn them before they send more money.
In 2025 alone, the operation notified 3,780 victims and is estimated to have saved $225.8 million. One of the most revealing statistics in the report is that 78% of those notified had no idea they were being scammed at the time they were contacted. That detail highlights how convincing many of these operations have become, especially when victims are shown fake profits and coached by supposed experts.
The FBI included specific examples. In one case, agents stopped a victim from liquidating $750,000 from his 401(k) retirement account to send to fraudsters. In another, a woman was prevented from selling her home in order to fund a supposed $500,000 investment. These cases show how crypto fraud can escalate far beyond speculative spare capital and move into retirement savings and core household assets.
The report also mentions a separate initiative, the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Columbia Scam Center Strike Force. This effort combines the Department of Justice, FBI, Secret Service, State Department, and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, to pursue and dismantle scam compounds operating in Southeast Asia.
According to the FBI, the strike force targets Chinese organized crime affiliates involved in these regional scam networks and works to cut off U.S.-based internet infrastructure exploited by the compounds. Since Operation Level Up began, the Bureau says more than $500 million in total losses have been prevented across all notified victims. The agency also emphasized that this number is likely a floor rather than a ceiling, because many victims never file a report at all.