The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released its 2025 Internet Crime Report (IC3), which has revealed some troubling statistics.
Americans lost an eye-popping $20.9 billion to cybercrime last year, as per the new report. This shows a rather devastating surge in cryptocurrency crime.
What is particularly staggering is that cryptocurrency-related fraud makes up more than half of the total losses.
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Cryptocurrency crime dominance
Investment fraud was by far the costliest category. It has accounted for $10.7 billion of the overall cybercrime losses. Scammers have weaponized the decentralized and often pseudonymous nature of the mercurial asset to evade traditional financial tracking.
Criminals typically rely on “pig butchering” schemes, fake exchanges, and liquidity pool scams.
The 60 age demographic has accounted for a massive $6.4 billion in losses (roughly 31% of the total).
Actually, the 30–39 age group filed the highest number of overall complaints. However, their median financial losses were significantly lower compared to the previous group. Elderly people are frequently targeted by investment traps, romance scams, and tech support fraud.
The losses were mainly concentrated in three states (California with $3.2 billion, Texas with $1.8 billion, and Florida with $1.7 billion).
On the bright side, the FBI has managed to freeze more than 3,000 illicit wallets during the operation. This has saved potential victims more than $500 million.
AI has also been identified as a major catalyst for the surging crime rates. Roughly 86,000 complaints directly involving AI-enabled crimes. They have cost victims nearly $893 million.
Source: https://u.today/fbi-crypto-fraud-reaches-11-billion
