The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released its cryptocurrency fraud report 2023, revealing that Americans lost an astonishing $5.6 billion due to crypto-related scams. This is an increase of 45% compared to the previous year.
The report reveals that a tenth of all complaints reported to the FBI involved cryptocurrency-related scams. However, as highlighted above, these complaints contributed to nearly half of the overall losses. This has brought out the adverse effects of crypto fraud, as depicted in the article.
75% of Fraud Victims Unaware They’ve Been Scammed, FBI Reports
According to the report, of the 69,000 complaints regarding cryptocurrencies, people over the age of 60 were the most vulnerable and lost about $1.6 billion. The most common type of fraud noticed was investment schemes, which constituted 70% of all cases. Other categories included call centre scams and government impostor scams, accounting for 10% of the reports.
Another disturbing fact is the possibility of labor trafficking being connected to crypto scams. People are tricked into taking jobs overseas, especially in call centres, due to ‘pig butchering’ scams. These schemes entail the development of friendly relationships with the victims before making them part with their money in fraudulent business ventures.
The other popular scams identified were play-to-earn, where users buy tokens for online games and their wallets are frozen, and fake cryptocurrency recovery services for those who have already lost their money.
James Barnacle, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, warned that recovering money lost through these scams is “slim.” He also shared a concerning statistic: Of the 3,000 people who have received the FBI notification about being fraud victims this year, 75% of them have no clue that they were fraud victims.
The current report demonstrates how the problem of cryptocurrency scams is becoming increasingly severe and how it is high time to address this issue more actively.
