FBI IC3 2025 Report: Crypto Fraud Hits $11.4 Billion — What the Numbers Mean

Table of Contents

• The headline numbers
• Where the crypto losses come from
• Who is being targeted
• The part victims should not skip: reporting works
• What the trend lines mean for 2026
• Frequently asked questions
• What is the IC3, exactly?
• Does filing an IC3 complaint start an investigation into my case?
• I'm not in the United States. Is the report still relevant?
• The report says billions were lost. Does that mean my money is gone for good?
• The bottom line

Every spring, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) publishes the closest thing that exists to an official scoreboard of online fraud in the United States. The 2025 Internet Crime Report, released in April 2026, is the grimmest edition yet — and the most useful one for anyone trying to understand where crypto fraud is heading. We read it so you don't have to. Here is what matters.

The headline numbers

Two things stand out immediately. First, the growth is not slowing: total losses rose 26% in a single year, from $16.6 billion in 2024 to $20.9 billion in 2025. Second, crypto is no longer a subplot — it is the main story. Cryptocurrency was involved in 181,565 complaints (up 21%) and $11.37 billion in losses (up 22%), meaning more than one in every two dollars reported stolen online in 2025 moved through crypto.

The average crypto complaint involved $62,604 — roughly three times the average across all complaint types ($20,699). Crypto scams are not high-volume, low-value crime. They are engineered to take everything.

Where the crypto losses come from

The report breaks crypto losses down by the scheme behind them. The pattern will be familiar to anyone who has read our guides.

The single biggest engine is investment fraud — $8.6 billion overall, of which $7.2 billion ran through crypto. This is the category that contains pig butchering and crypto romance scams: long-con operations where the "trading platform" is a fiction and the withdrawal wall eventually goes up. Complaint volume in this category jumped 48% in one year.

The second number deserves its own alarm. IC3 counted $1.4 billion lost to recovery scams — fraudsters who target people who have already been robbed, promising to retrieve the funds for an upfront fee. If someone has contacted you claiming they can recover your crypto, read our guide to crypto recovery scams before you send anything. The FBI's data confirms what we tell every victim: the second scam is now a billion-dollar industry of its own.

Who is being targeted

The most sobering section of the report is demographic. Americans aged 60 and older filed 201,266 complaints — up 37% year over year — and lost $7.7 billion, a 59% increase. Their average loss was about $38,500, nearly double the all-ages average, and 12,444 older victims each lost more than $100,000.

Within crypto specifically, the 60+ group lost $4.43 billion — about 39% of all crypto losses — often through schemes that start with a phone call or a pop-up and end at a Bitcoin ATM. That pipeline is exactly why we wrote our guide to crypto ATM scams: the machine is the cash-out point for government-impersonation and tech-support fraud, two categories that surged in 2025.

Contact

call, pop-up, or message

Fear or greed

arrest threat / profit promise

Crypto payment

ATM, wire, or transfer

Irreversible loss

avg. $62,604

The part victims should not skip: reporting works

It is easy to read a report like this and conclude that nothing helps. The data says otherwise — and this is the section worth remembering.

1. 1

   Financial Fraud Kill Chain

   When fraud is reported fast, the FBI can ask banks and exchanges to freeze funds mid-transit. In 2025 the Kill Chain acted on roughly 3,900 incidents involving $1.16 billion and successfully froze $679 million — a 58% success rate.

2. 2

   Operation Level Up

   Using complaint data, the FBI proactively identified and warned 3,780 people who were being actively scammed. 78% had no idea. Estimated savings: $225 million.

3. 3

   International arrests

   IC3 complaint data fed 13 joint operations with Indian authorities in 2025 alone, producing 175 arrests — part of 475+ since 2022.

Every one of those outcomes started with a victim filing a report. The freeze rate is the number to internalize: when reports arrive quickly — ideally within the first 24 hours — more than half of the targeted funds in Kill Chain cases were stopped. Speed is the single variable you control.

What the trend lines mean for 2026

Reading the last three reports together, three trajectories are clear:

• Crypto's majority share is now entrenched. Crypto was about 45% of reported losses in 2023, passed the halfway mark in 2024 (56%), and held it in 2025 (54%). Fraud has consolidated around the one payment rail that is fast, borderless, and irreversible — the same properties we unpack in why scammers demand USDT and stablecoins.
• Impersonation is industrializing. Government-impersonation complaints nearly doubled in one year. Assume any unsolicited "agent," "investigator," or "support desk" demanding crypto is fraudulent — no government agency accepts crypto payments.
• The victim pool is aging. The 60+ cohort now absorbs well over a third of all losses. If you have older family members, the highest-leverage thing you can do after reading this is send them one article — our seven red flags of a crypto scam is written for exactly that conversation.

Frequently asked questions

What is the IC3, exactly?

The Internet Crime Complaint Center is the FBI's central intake point for internet crime reports, running since 2000. Complaints feed FBI field offices, task forces, and international partners. The annual reports are public and free.

Does filing an IC3 complaint start an investigation into my case?

Not automatically — IC3 receives over a million complaints a year, and not every complaint gets an individual investigator. But complaints are aggregated, cross-referenced, and fed into operations like the Kill Chain and Level Up. A complaint that is fast, complete, and includes transaction hashes has a meaningfully better chance of joining an actionable case.

I'm not in the United States. Is the report still relevant?

Yes. The scam networks IC3 documents operate globally — the same pig-butchering compounds and fake platforms target victims on every continent. The report is the best public window into how they operate. For where to file outside the US, our reporting guide lists official channels by country.

The report says billions were lost. Does that mean my money is gone for good?

Not necessarily — but honesty matters here: full recovery is rare, and speed is decisive. The $679 million frozen through the Kill Chain went overwhelmingly to victims who reported within days. Read can stolen crypto be recovered for a realistic picture, and treat anyone who guarantees recovery as the next scam.

The bottom line

The 2025 IC3 report is a picture of fraud at industrial scale — but it is also, quietly, a proof of concept for reporting. Frozen funds, proactive warnings, and arrests all trace back to victims who filed. If you have been targeted, report your case — properly, quickly, and with the evidence that lets investigators act.