Crypto scams in 2026: what the latest FBI and FTC numbers say

Each year the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission publish what people reported to them the year before. Here is what the 2025 data says, what it does not say, and what it means if you are worried about a message, a platform, or a payment right now.

The FBI's picture: crypto is now most of the money

According to the FBI's 2025 IC3 Annual Report, the Internet Crime Complaint Center received 1,008,597 complaints in 2025 reporting $20.877 billion in losses, a 26% increase from 2024. Complaints that involved cryptocurrency numbered 181,565 and reported $11.366 billion in losses, up 22% from the year before. The average reported crypto loss was $62,604, and 18,589 people said they lost more than $100,000.

The largest single category was cryptocurrency investment fraud: 61,559 complaints and $7.228 billion in reported losses. In the FBI's description, contact starts by text, social media, an advertisement, or a dating app, then moves to a private messaging app. The victim is steered onto a fake trading platform that shows fake profits. When they try to withdraw, they are told to pay "taxes and fees" first, a last extraction before the scammers disappear. Our guide to pig butchering walks through that script stage by stage.

Who is being targeted

Older adults carry the heaviest losses. The FBI's report counts 201,266 complaints from people aged 60 and over in 2025, with $7.748 billion in losses, up 59% from 2024, and an average loss of $38,500. On crypto alone, people over 60 filed more than 42,000 complaints and reported more than $4.3 billion in losses, more than any other age group.

Cryptocurrency ATMs and kiosks show the same pattern. The FBI logged 13,460 complaints and $389 million in losses tied to them in 2025, a 58% rise in losses. People over 60 accounted for about $257 million of that. Anyone who tells you to feed cash into a crypto machine is following a script.

The scams that cost the most

Across all payment types, the FBI ranks these as the costliest cyber-enabled frauds of 2025:

• Investment fraud: $8.65 billion reported, most of it crypto-related.
• Business email compromise: $3.05 billion.
• Tech and customer support scams: $2.13 billion, from 47,794 complaints.
• Romance and confidence scams: $929 million.
• Government impersonation: $798 million.

One more line deserves attention. The FBI counted 10,516 complaints about recovery scams in 2025, with $1.4 billion in losses. The FBI notes that this figure may include money lost in the earlier scam that prompted the contact. See the recovery scam that follows the first scam.

The FTC's picture: a different lens, the same direction

The FTC collects reports through its Consumer Sentinel Network. In testimony to Congress's Joint Economic Committee on March 25, 2026, the FTC said consumers submitted 3 million fraud reports in 2025 and reported $15.9 billion in losses, up from 2.6 million reports and over $12 billion in 2024. Investment scams were again the costliest category, at over $7.9 billion, roughly half of all reported losses. Imposter scams were the most reported, with over 1 million reports and over $3.5 billion lost.

Two other FTC findings matter for anyone with a phone. Bank payments carried the highest total losses, followed by cryptocurrency. A text message was the most common way scammers made first contact, while social media produced the largest total losses. In a June 2026 release, the FTC added that people reported losing nearly $1 billion to business impersonators, with the highest losses to scammers posing as banks.

Do not add the FBI and FTC totals together. The FTC lists the FBI's IC3 among its data contributors, so the two datasets overlap.

What the blockchain itself shows

Complaint data only counts people who report. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, measures money flowing on-chain to addresses it links to scams instead. In its 2026 Crypto Crime Report, it estimates scams received at least $14 billion on-chain in 2025 and projects the final figure at about $17 billion. It found impersonation scams grew 1400% year over year, and the average scam payment rose from $782 to $2,764.

Reading these numbers honestly

Every figure above is a floor. The FTC's testimony cites research finding that only 4.8 percent of victims of mass-market consumer fraud complained to a Better Business Bureau or a government agency. Accounting for underreporting, the FTC estimated the overall cost of fraud to consumers in 2024 could be as high as $195.9 billion. Reporting still matters. The FBI says the transaction details in a complaint help its Recovery Asset Team act, and that this works best when complaints are filed as quickly as possible.

What to do

• Pause before you pay. A request to send crypto, use a crypto ATM, or pay a fee to withdraw is a stop sign.
• Check the pitch first. Paste the message, website, or wallet address into the free risk rating. It runs in your browser in seconds.
• Get the detail if you need it. The $9.95 full forensic report lists every signal, screens the addresses, and gives you a PDF to keep.
• Report it. File with the FBI at ic3.gov and the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, even if the amount was small.
• If money already moved, follow our first-hours checklist and talk to an analyst.

Sources

1. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internet Crime Complaint Center. 2025 IC3 Annual Report. https://www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2025_IC3Report.pdf
2. Federal Trade Commission. Prepared Statement of the Federal Trade Commission on The Rising Scam Economy: Modernizing Federal Approaches to Protect Americans from Foreign Fraudsters, before the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, March 25, 2026. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/ftc-testimony-jec-hearing-on-the-rising-scam-economy.pdf
3. Federal Trade Commission. FTC Data Show People Reported Losing $3.5 Billion to Imposter Scams in 2025, press release, June 15, 2026. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/06/ftc-data-show-people-reported-losing-3-point-5-billion-imposter-scams-2025
4. Chainalysis. 2026 Crypto Crime Report: Scams, January 13, 2026. https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-scams-2026/

Blockchain Fraud is a service of UnyKorn LLC (Wyoming). Educational information and risk analysis, not legal advice. We do not guarantee the recovery of any funds. We charge a flat fee or retainer, never a percentage of recovered funds.