Crypto scams stole $5.6 billion from Americans last year, mostly from older people
People in the U.S. reported losing $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency scams in 2023, with older people hit the hardest, according to the FBI.
People in the U.S. reported losing $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency scams in 2023, with older people hit the hardest, according to the FBI.
The FBI’s first annual Cryptocurrency Fraud Report, published Monday, shows that people in the U.S. reported more than 69,000 complaints last year saying they had been scammed into sending cryptocurrency to criminals, often by using commonly available crypto ATMs.
People 60 years old and older filed more than 16,000 complaints of cryptocurrency fraud and reported losing over $1.6 billion, much more than any other age group. People under 20 had the fewest, with 858 complaints totaling almost $15 million.
The reported scams ranged from phony tech support help and extortion to scammers impersonating government officials. The vast majority of reported losses — almost $4 billion — were a result of investment scams, a category that the FBI uses primarily to refer to so-called pig butchering scams. That’s a 53% increase from the $2.57 billion losses reported in 2022.
In pig butchering scams, fraudsters assume a fake persona and cultivate a deep, often monthslong romantic relationship or friendship with a victim, then convince them to invest more and more of their savings into a bogus cryptocurrency investment platform.
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