Crypto-related fraud jumped by 45% last year, FBI says

(CNN) — Victims reported more than $5.6 billion in fraud related to cryptocurrency in 2023, a 45% increase from losses reported in 2022, the FBI said Monday in a new report .

A jump in crypto-related investment scams fueled the overall increase in fraud. Victims reported nearly $4 billion in crypto-related investment losses in 2023 compared to $2.57 billion in 2022.

It’s the first time the FBI has published a report explicitly focused on crypto-related fraud from a larger set of annual fraud data, an FBI official told reporters on a call. Crypto-related fraud was close to a half of the record $12.5 billion in losses from online fraud reported to the FBI last year.

The FBI is trying to raise public awareness about the issue and to get victims to more quickly report crypto fraud to recover the stolen money. “Many victims have accumulated massive debt to cover losses from these fraudulent investments,” the FBI official said.

The report underscores “a continuing threat to the American public” from overseas scammers, the official added. “Cryptocurrencies touch on every threat the FBI investigates.”

The FBI investigates a vast array of digital crimes, including ransomware attacks and tech-support scams, which cost the global economy billions of dollars annually. The new report shows that crypto is the currency of choice for many of these schemes.

An increasing number of crooks in different parts of the world are getting involved in the investment scams, which involve gaining the confidence of victims and duping them into investing cryptocurrency in phony ventures, the FBI official said.

People of all ages can fall victim to a crypto-fraud scheme, the official said. People over 60 accounted for $1.6 billion in reported losses in 2023, according to the report.

A CNN investigation last year spotlighted some of the tens of thousands of American victims of the elaborate crypto-investment schemes, which are sometimes carried out by Chinese crime syndicates out of war-torn Myanmar and other countries in Southeast Asia.

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