Cryptocurrency-linked fraud inflicted roughly $11.366 billion in losses on Americans in 2025, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report released. The agency said those losses rose 22% from the prior year and formed a major part of a broader cybercrime toll that approached $21 billion across more than one million complaints.
The report makes clear that crypto fraud is no longer a niche criminal category but a central component of the U.S. cybercrime landscape. Investment scams remained the biggest source of losses, while impersonation schemes and fraud tied to Bitcoin ATMs and kiosks expanded the damage across retail access points and older user groups.
Investment scams remained the dominant source of damage
Investment fraud accounted for $7.277 billion of the total crypto-related losses, making it the single largest category identified by the FBI. That figure shows how heavily criminal activity continues to rely on convincing victims to move funds into fraudulent opportunities presented as legitimate wealth-building strategies.
The pressure was not limited to one scam format, as impersonation fraud also surged at an extraordinary pace. The FBI reported that these schemes rose by about 1,400% year over year, while the average payment severity increased by more than 600%, underscoring how much more effective and financially damaging these operations have become.
Retail-facing infrastructure also remained exposed, particularly through Bitcoin ATM and kiosk fraud. The report logged $389 million in losses from 13,460 complaints tied to those channels, highlighting how physical and semi-physical crypto on-ramps continue to serve as high-risk points of exploitation.
Older Americans absorbed an outsized share of losses
Americans aged 60 and older accounted for approximately $4.432 billion in reported crypto losses, making them one of the most heavily impacted demographics in the FBI’s findings. That concentration reinforces the view that fraudsters are targeting populations they perceive as more vulnerable to social engineering and high-pressure financial deception.
The FBI also stressed that the official figures likely understate the true scale of the problem. The report referenced independent Chainalysis analysis suggesting that total crypto scam losses in 2025 may have exceeded $17 billion, pointing to a substantial gap between reported incidents and the broader reality of financial harm.
Artificial intelligence is now amplifying that threat environment by making fraud faster, cheaper and more convincing. The report said AI-enabled scams were estimated to be about 4.5 times more profitable than traditional methods, showing how automation and synthetic deception are changing the economics of online crime.
Enforcement improved, but the threat continued to evolve
Law enforcement did not stand still as the losses mounted. The FBI pointed to Operation Level Up, which notified more than 8,000 victims and is estimated to have prevented about $500 million in additional losses, evidence that intervention efforts are becoming more proactive and more targeted.
Even so, the broader takeaway is that crypto fraud is becoming more operationally sophisticated and more deeply embedded in mainstream financial crime. With record losses, rising impersonation activity and continued abuse of retail access channels, exchanges, custodians, ATM operators and analytics firms will remain under pressure to strengthen verification, monitoring and user-protection controls.
