Americans lost $5.6 billion in 2023 due to crypto scams, according to a report from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).
This figure represents a 45% increase compared to 2022.
Despite only making up 10% of all complaints submitted to the FBI in 2023, crypto fraud accounted for nearly half of the total monetary losses, the report indicated.
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Investment fraud remained the predominant form of cryptocurrency crime, making up 71% of reported cases, while schemes involving call center fraud and impersonation of government officials contributed to 10% of the losses.
Many victims were deceived through confidence schemes, a type of scam in which fraudsters build trust with the victim before stealing their funds. The FBI's primary piece of advice to avoid falling victim to these schemes is to be wary of any investment opportunities coming from individuals you haven't met in person.
Additionally, crypto ATMs have become hotbeds for fraud due to the anonymity of the transactions. The FBI documented 5,500 cases involving these ATMs, with total losses exceeding $189 million. Common techniques to steal money through ATMs include customer service fraud, government impersonation, extortion, and romance scams.
Other forms of fraud include play-to-earn gaming scams. In these cases, users are tricked into purchasing tokens for online games, only to find their wallets frozen afterward.
Some fraudulent businesses even offer to help victims recover lost cryptocurrency, only to scam them further.
The report further detailed that older individuals were the most frequent victims of these schemes. Of the 69,000 crypto-related complaints filed with the FBI, victims over the age of 60 suffered losses amounting to approximately $1.6 billion. James Barnacle, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division, explained to ABC News:
Elderly have generally a lot more free time. They're at home, they're in an assisted living facility, and so they're pretty easy to target, in that sense, just their availability is higher than someone who's not at home all day. And the fraudsters are really good at building that rapport.
The FBI's report underscores the increasing danger of crypto fraud, recently exemplified during Apple's iPhone 16 launch, where scammers hijacked YouTube with live streams featuring AI-generated versions of CEO Tim Cook promoting crypto schemes.
