The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released its 2025 annual report. According to Decrypt, losses from cryptocurrency-related scams reached a record high of $11.37B, up 22% from 2024. The center received a total of 181,565 cryptocurrency-related complaints in the year, with an average loss of about $62,604 per complaint.
Victims age 60 and older are hit the hardest
The most striking data in the report is the age distribution. Victims aged 60 and older submitted 44,555 cryptocurrency-related complaints, with total losses of $4.43B—the highest share among all age groups. This figure is nearly double the losses of the 50–59 age group ($2.14B), and it represents a significant increase compared with the roughly $2.8 billion in 2024.
Reasons why older adults are more likely to become targets include: lack of familiarity with cryptocurrency technology, difficulty in recognizing online scam tactics, and “recovery schemes”—scammers posing as experts who can recover stolen funds, carrying out a second round of scams against victims who have already been deceived. Recovery schemes caused approximately $1.4 billion in crypto losses in 2025.
Investment scams account for the largest share
By scam type, investment schemes remain the category with the highest losses, totaling $7.23B, up 25% from 2024. The number of complaints increased by 48%. These scams typically dangle the lure of high returns, enticing victims to put their money into fake trading platforms or investment programs.
Crypto ATM scams also grew significantly. In 2025, the IC3 received 13,460 related complaints, with losses of $389 million, up 58% from the losses in 2024. Among them, older victims lost $257.4 million through ATMs.
AI becomes a new scam tool
Notably, the report shows that more than 22,000 complaints involved the use of artificial intelligence, and adjusted losses exceed $893 million. AI is being used to generate more realistic scam messages, forge identity verification, and automate scam processes—making traditional prevention measures harder to deal with.
From a broader perspective, all categories of cybercrime in 2025 caused losses of nearly $21 billion for U.S. residents. Cryptocurrency-related scams account for more than half of that total, indicating that the digital asset space remains a major hotspot for cybercrime.
This article is FBI’s report: Cryptocurrency scam losses in 2025 hit a record high of $11.4 billion, with nearly half of losses coming from people aged 60 and older. It first appeared on Lianxin ABMedia.
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