The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released its 2025 annual report, highlighting a dramatic surge in cybercrime losses, with cryptocurrency-related fraud emerging as the predominant factor. The report, which compiles data from the IC3 platform, recorded a staggering 1,008,597 complaints and total combined losses of $20.877 billion, marking a 26% increase from the previous year, 2024.

Cryptocurrency-related fraud alone accounted for more than half of all reported cybercrime losses nationwide, draining over $11.3 billion from American victims in 2025. Specifically, the digital asset category generated 181,565 complaints and $11.366 billion in losses, solidifying its position as the most financially impactful category tracked in the report. This represents an astronomical rise from approximately $27 million in crypto fraud losses reported in 2017, multiplying by more than 400 times over eight years.

At the epicenter of this crisis is cryptocurrency investment fraud, which the FBI identifies as the top threat. These sophisticated long-con schemes leverage “psychological manipulation, the appearance of legitimacy, and exploitation of cryptocurrencies to deceive victims into investing large sums of money.” In 2025, such scams were responsible for $7.2 billion in reported losses, making them the single greatest source of financial harm to Americans.

The modus operandi of these investment scams typically involves criminals initiating contact through various digital channels such as text messages, social media platforms, dating apps, or online advertisements. Victims are lured into seemingly exclusive investment groups, often led by purported knowledgeable insiders, and then instructed to transfer cryptocurrency to fraudulent platforms. These platforms display fabricated profits and may even offer fake loans to encourage further investment. When victims attempt to withdraw their funds, scammers demand additional taxes and fees before ultimately disappearing with all deposited money. The FBI has identified these operations as being orchestrated by organized criminal enterprises based in Southeast Asia, particularly in Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, where victims of human trafficking are reportedly forced into labor to run these scam centers.

Beyond investment fraud, cryptocurrency's role extends to being a dominant payment method across various other fraud types. The report indicates that digital assets were utilized in 72% of investment fraud transactions, 43% of tech support scam transactions, and 40% of government impersonation scheme payments. This widespread adoption of crypto by criminals across multiple crime categories underscores its preferred status for illicit money extraction and movement. While investment fraud as a broader category reached $8.648 billion in losses, the cryptocurrency component constituted the largest share. Tech support scams involving digital assets independently accounted for $1.226 billion in losses.

Among all demographic groups, Americans aged 60 and older bore the heaviest financial burden from these crypto-related schemes. This vulnerable group filed 44,555 cryptocurrency-related complaints and suffered $4.43 billion in losses, surpassing all other age brackets. Within the subcategory of crypto investment fraud, individuals aged 60 and above reported $2.76 billion in losses, significantly higher than the $1.38 billion reported by those aged 50 to 59. Furthermore, crypto ATM and kiosk scams, where criminals direct victims to physical machines using QR codes, resulted in 13,460 complaints and $389 million in losses, marking a 58% increase from 2024. Seniors alone filed 6,188 of these complaints and absorbed $257.5 million of the losses, approximately 66% of the total.

Recovery scams, which prey on previous crypto fraud victims by promising to retrieve lost funds, generated an additional 10,516 complaints and $1.4 billion in losses. The 60-plus age group once again led this category, accounting for $540.5 million in recovery scam losses alone.

The Bureau has not remained passive in the face of these escalating threats. Operation Level Up, launched in January 2024, utilizes IC3 complaint data to proactively identify and notify victims of cryptocurrency investment fraud while they are still actively being scammed. In 2025 alone, the operation successfully notified 3,780 victims and saved an estimated $225.8 million, with a remarkable 78% of those notified being unaware they were targets of a scam. Notable successes include agents preventing a victim from liquidating $750,000 from a 401(k) and stopping a woman from selling her home to fund a $500,000