Americans Fraud was committed Out of the billions last year – and crypto is very much to blame.
According to A report Americans lost more than $5.6 billion to cryptocurrency scams in 2023, according to the FBI on Monday. That’s less than half of the total financial fraud losses in the US last year—and a staggering 45 percent increase in crypto scam losses by 2022.
Investment scams accounted for about 71 percent of all cryptocurrency scams, with losses totaling nearly $4 billion. Bad actors Call center fraud, government impersonation scams, and dating sites were also used to cheat people out of their crypto.
“Over time, the victim is being cultivated, and the fraudsters are building trust in the victim,” said James Barnacle, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division. For ABC News. “They’re friends. They met on the Internet, or they met on social media. They met over text messages. They develop a friendship, then the scammer offers an investment opportunity, and the pitch is something like, ‘Hey, I’m in a group that invests or I know someone who invests in cryptocurrency.’”
In an FBI report, FBI Assistant Director, Michael D. Nordvall attributes this to the “decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, the speed of irreversible transactions and the ability to transfer value around the world”. Its popularity among scammers.
Nordvoll said he hopes the report will “bring attention to the prevalence of losses associated with cryptocurrency-related fraud, promote awareness of the most prevalent schemes that use cryptocurrency, and educate people about ways to protect themselves from this type of fraud.”
Interestingly, as crypto is more popular with Gen Z and Millennials – the over 60s were the most defrauded. People over 60 filed nearly 17,000 crypto-related complaints and reported losses of more than $1.6 billion. For comparison, 20- to 29-year-olds filed about 6,200 complaints but lost just one-tenth as much, a still outrageous total of $168,585,320.
“Older people generally have a lot more free time,” Barnacle said. “They’re at home, they’re in an assisted living facility, and so they’re very easy to target, in that sense, just their availability is greater than someone who’s not at home all day. And cheaters are really good at building that relationship.”
The worst-hit state was California—with more than $1.1 billion in damage—followed by Texas, Florida, New York, and New Jersey.
How to stop yourself from becoming One of manyThe FBI encourages people to research the origin of any suspicious calls, avoid giving personal information to unknown parties, verify email addresses from banks or governments, and be wary of get-rich-quick schemes. If you have been scammed, you can report it to the FBI IC3.gov.
Earlier this year, VICE News’ Natashya Gutierrez investigated the explosive crypto scam industry built on slave labor, gaining rare access to human trafficking victims who were forced to steal billions of dollars from everyday Americans.
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