The Federal Bureau of Investigation has released its annual internet crime complaint report, revealing that cryptocurrency and AI-related scams ranked among the most financially damaging for Americans in 2025. The bureau recorded 181,565 complaints in this category, with total losses exceeding $11 billion. Overall, the FBI received more than one million complaints across all cyber-enabled crimes, with reported losses reaching approximately $21 billion.
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center found that investment scams produced the highest proportion of victims who lost money through cryptocurrency, compared to other payment methods such as cash, debit cards, and gift cards. The data underscores a growing trend of fraudsters directing victims toward digital assets as a preferred vehicle for financial theft. Losses tied to these investment schemes accounted for a significant share of the total figures reported.
Crimes targeting younger Americans also featured prominently in the report. Roughly 10% of the 13,168 complaints involving cybercrimes against minors aged 17 and under were connected to cryptocurrency or crypto ATMs. Those cases resulted in more than $5 million in combined losses, highlighting the vulnerability of younger users to digital asset fraud.
The volume of complaints came despite the FBI’s own efforts to intervene through Operation Level Up, a 2024 initiative designed to identify and alert individuals who were actively falling victim to cryptocurrency investment fraud. Separately, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis reported in March that illicit addresses globally received $154 billion in 2025, a figure driven in part by sanctions evasions.
The FBI report also documented 32,424 complaints involving impersonation of government officials, which resulted in approximately $800 million in losses. The report did not, however, reference a March notice issued by bureau officials warning Americans about a token on the Tron blockchain that was impersonating the FBI. That token used the bureau’s logo and falsely claimed that users’ wallets were under investigation.
Victims who encountered the fraudulent Tron token were directed to submit personal information under the pretense of completing an FBI anti-money-laundering verification process. The stated consequence for non-compliance was the freezing of their accounts. The scheme represented a direct exploitation of the FBI’s institutional credibility to extract sensitive data from unsuspecting users.
Originally reported by CoinTelegraph.
