FBI Reports $5.6B Lost to Crypto Fraud, 45% Increase in Loss Since Prev Year
Tanzeel Akhtar has been covering the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector since 2015. She has written for the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CoinDesk and Bitcoin Magazine.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) latest report highlights the rise in cryptocurrency-related fraud, with estimated losses hitting $5.6 billion.
In a report, the FBI said, the IC3 received over 69,000 complaints involving financial crimes connected to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether.
Although these cryptocurrency-related complaints comprised only 10% of all financial fraud reports, they accounted for nearly half of the total losses.
The agency reports a staggering 53% increase in losses was observed in cryptocurrency-linked investment fraud schemes, with total losses jumping from $2.57 billion in 2022 to $3.96 billion in 2023.
Many victims of these fraudulent schemes were left in severe financial distress, with some accumulating substantial debt in an attempt to recover from their losses.
The report found that individuals aged 30 to 49 filed the highest number cryptocurrency-investment fraud complaints, with about 5,200 reports in each of the 30-39 and 40-49 age groups.
However, it was older individuals—those over the age of 60—who suffered the greatest financial losses, reporting more than $1.24 billion in total.
The exploitation of cryptocurrency spans across nearly all fraud categories tracked by the IC3. Investment scams were the most dominant, accounting for approximately 71% of all cryptocurrency-related losses.
Call center frauds, which often involved tech support and government impersonation scams, represented about 10% of these losses.
The decentralized nature of
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