Crypto▼ Bearish
$11B lost, 181K complaints: FBI crypto-scam report by the numbers
The FBI's IC3 logged $11.366B in crypto scam losses across 181,565 complaints, with kiosk-related losses jumping 58% Y/Y. Spokane banned crypto ATMs. D.C. sued Athena Bitcoin.
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The FBI logged 181,565 cryptocurrency-related complaints in 2025, and Americans reported losing more than $11.366 billion. The figure comes from the Internet Crime Complaint Center's 2025 Annual Report, released April 6, 2026. Crypto losses accounted for more than half of the $20.877 billion in total internet-crime losses IC3 tracked last year. It is the first time the bureau's reported losses punched past $20 billion.
The largest single category was crypto investment fraud: $7.2 billion to $7.228 billion across roughly 61,559 complaints. That figure is up 25% from 2024, the FBI said.
Kiosks are a smaller but faster-growing slice. IC3 counted 13,460 kiosk-related complaints tied to $389 million in losses, and losses jumped 58% year over year. In that subset alone, victims 60 and older accounted for $257.4 million across 6,188 complaints, roughly two-thirds of the kiosk category.
"By the time a victim is at a kiosk, they are already deep in the scammer's trance," said CertiK's Stefan Muehlbauer, as cities and regulators started treating the machines less like convenience tech and more like a public-safety problem.