FBI Report on Internet Crimes: 2025 Stats

The FBI just dropped some shocking stats showing that crypto-related crimes shot up by 22% last year. We're talking about a whopping total of $11.36 billion in 2025. The biggest issue? Crypto investment scams are leading the pack. We all know scammers love to use social engineering tactics. Overall, cyber-enabled crimes led to an 85% loss rate, which is pretty massive for 2025. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if these numbers keep climbing in 2026, especially with all the crypto scams and attacks happening lately. Check out the full report in the link I shared. Let’s hope nobody in our community falls prey to crypto or cyber crimes this year.

Thanks, you've highlighted a real growing problem, which is likely to grow in the future and unfortunately it's logical and correct! So to prevent this kind of fraud, I think technologists should be working on ways to make their fraud strategies more difficult to succeed, and I think they're working on that all the time!

I read something similar yesterday, 2025 made a new all time high for crypto crime and theft, another one that I read was about France, the wrench attack keeps growing too, it also made a new high yesterday as one of the most unsafe country for crypto owners, if any France investors are on here its time to adjust your privacy, it's possible to lose your life in a wrench attack as the attacker will go to any lent to get the coins out of you. Online crypto crime is now the new gold rush, even youths in my country are advising one another to rather hack or scam crypto investors of their coins because it's the new fastest way to get rich, it's getting brutal for crypto every single year.

It's also interesting to see, for one, that most of the peeps that got into such scams are people from the elder period - more important is that such an amount of 60+ people got crypto in the first place

Crypto crime is not something new to me and seeing it increasing day by day is not something that I will be surprised about, many youths have now take crypto crime as a job, some will prefer to be a fraud than to work under someone or companies, crypto crime has now become something like a way to survive for some people and they see it as something that is not a crime because they are also doing it to make it in life and forget that they are stealing from other people. The more they are doing it the more we need to be very careful and do everything to make sure we protect our investments, they are doing everything to get rich and it is getting out of control because they have many ways to make sure people fall into their trap and when you fall into their trap it is only your smartness and prayer that will save you because they are not doing some of the things ordinary, i don’t think there is a way to stop them, the best thing is to be careful and don’t trust anyone you meet online.

That's actually a really important point that gets overlooked in these discussions. Older people getting into crypto is genuinely a good sign for adoption, but it also means they're walking into a space full of sophisticated scams without the same level of street knowledge that younger users have built up over years of being online. Scammers know this and they specifically target that demographic. The pig butchering scams especially, they're designed around patience and trust building which tends to work better on people who aren't used to the "too good to be true" culture of crypto social media.

And they have been the number 1 target by this criminals. Like in this story, Hong Kong Crypto Scam: Retiree Loses HK$6.6 Million in Multi-Stage Fraud. So everything in our life, like technology or crypto, has it's positive and negative This criminals are really doing their job, not just in pig butchering scams, they are leveraging social engineering attacks too to stole identities and uses it to scam people. Pig butchering though is really hard to spot at the beginning. That's why there are many who still falls for it and can't believed it until everything was unraveled to them and as if they have been hypnotized by the criminals.

People that are on this forum that are not just here to spam but reading what other good members are posting should be able to avoid these scam because they are avoidable. But I am not sure about people that just want to spam on this forum instead because they may just be posting and not reading what other people are posting. We have enough topics that people can read about these scam and how we can avoid them. Yes, crypto crimes will increase because more people are knowing about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Among people that will know cryptocurrencies are scammers and hackers also.

Usual scam on social media: is when a scammer pretends to be a support contact/representative. Asking anything on social media about crypto gets like 10 posts/messages from people/bots all pretending to be tech support or a company representative. The sad thing is, a lot of old people fall for it.

Base on the image above it seems we can create a hypothesis that most of the age bracket victims of cryptocurrency are elderly, who are above 60 years old, and it seems they wanted to earn money and most of them used their retirement or even extra funds but ended up getting scammed or attack and stole their funds and has a larger scale of money most of them are not into the generation of the technology or not quite enough englitehn with the risk possible provoke to invest and because they hope to make more money with their last funds is they are vulnerable with the attacks this is the reason why its not ideally make an investment to the things you are not fully aware and sad ended up its crypto space no one could find the attacker once your funds are stolen.

Crypto related crime has become a norm today in the world, as criminals has found a way to use crypto currency to scam ignorant victims of millions of dollars. I don't see this problem been solved anytime soon, the only solution is equipping people with information which will acts as a prevention mechanism. Because the best approach is to prevent a problem from happening than later coming to regret. Individuals who are into crypto related activities should seek education because when an individual is properly informed about crypto currency, it will be difficult for any scammer to deceive such a person into getting scammed.

Yes, let’s hope none of our community members fall victim to these scams. Although online scams are nothing new, they have become a serious concern. Almost everyone online is aware of the risks involved, but one positive thing people continue to do is try not to get caught up in them—even if they end up falling victim due to a small lapse in caution. The internet makes things easier, but it can be dangerous if you’re not careful while using it.

Bitcoin is financial asset and for an asset with high value in USD every person will want to own it and some persons will not want to do it legitimately and that is where bad actors get involved, to scam and hack what they can. Is not a bitcoin problem and it should not be made to have that perspective cause the fiat that is government issue currency do have scammers and hackers at it. We all will have to be smart and up to date with this scammers schemes and being at alert taking every unrecognised link as a possible phishing link. It is the only way to reduce scams and hacks incidents experiences by bitcoin users.

From the data presented, it shows that the elderly are more suseptible or rather prone, to sure cryptocurrencies related scams. Perhaps the older folks didn't give heed to the pros and cons of investing in crypto currencies before jumping in. Am sure the younger generations are sharpening their knowledge because anyone can be a victim despite the age, but being cautious while adhering to risk management practices will help one be better protected from such scenarios and be cyber secure enough to know when a site reeks of false information based on crypto currency investment.

I hope so that one here falls for any crypto scam. The red flags are always there most of the time, but the lust for money and getting rich quickly has been what have being driving people to fall into their traps. Crypto investment scams looks unreal from onset, why even trust a centralised entity from onset. Even the popular centralized wallets we know, we don't really put our full trust in them but trade with them carefully. Then how comes victims fall for this nature of scams easily, it becomes a question of contention if those scammers are outsmarting them or they’re just being naive about the whole thing until they fall victim.

These findings go a long way to show that crypto is fast-growing and, as such, one needs to take their safety seriously because criminals are out there looking for whom to attack and do away with their crypto assets, most especially their bitcoin holdings. As an enthusiast, it is good to play safe, avoid public announcement of crypto holdings, avoid flaunting your wallet on social media because you do not know who is who and who is watching you to making sure they trail you to attack you. These are the things majority of the crypto community members have no idea about hence they are always being attacked and hacked. It is hi time the crypto communioty become more security conscious to avoid having issues theynever envisaged for.

I think we should address the age of which most of these scams work on which is on senior citizens.They definitely are the ones who’s also not techsavvy hence why they end up being fooled easier by scammers. Their children should teach them and help secure their funds.

Now I understand why people associate the internet with scam practice, mainly the scam done are carried out through the help of the internet. This are the reason I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t trust bitcoin probably you can never tell what these people pass through, the stats shows clearly how large number of aged holders get scam because they’re not conversant with the internet or crypto scam besides who’s lecturing them on how bitcoin works because without a proper tutor they might end up failing again and these scammers keep coming always, everyone should be careful holding their coin due to high rate of scam.

Older people are more closer to retirement and so will be more desperate for a higher ROI and this is among the reason they will be a bigger target by scammers especially in investments scam, they can take the risks in putting almost everything they have saved on it, having a bias that makes them ignore risks because of profits. This is also for anyone in a need for a quick financial opportunity for stability and this is why Ponzi schemes still strive well in some regions. This is one of the most common ways for individuals to fall into social engineering attacks across age, at a desperate or uncertain position, attacker(s) comes like the savior and wreck havoc especially when the actual support are far from being responsive or too slow in response. I do advise others if there is an option in contacting customer support aside publicly or through groups then opt for it .

There's more cryptocurrency related complaints on page 54 of the report, could be good to know for awareness. It's a bit scary/concerning that AI is being used more and more to facilitate some of the crimes, especially for impersonation (Deepfakes), which we all know is quite hard to recognize, let alone for older people.