The elderly were the most vulnerable, and crypto ATMs have a variety of illicit uses, the report found.
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center has released its cryptocurrency fraud report for 2023. Americans lost $5.6 billion due to cryptocurrency fraud that year, up 45% from 2022, it said. Crypto-related complaints represented 10% of the total received, but almost 50% of the total lost that year, the FBI said.
The report found that of the 69,000 crypto-related complaints the FBI received in 2023, people over 60 were most often victimized, accounting for almost $1.6 billion of the losses. Almost 71% of the crypto fraud was related to investment schemes, and about 10% involved call center fraud and government impersonation scams.
The FBI received complaints from over 200 countries, but the vast majority of complaints and losses were from the United States. Many of the losses were the result of confidence schemes. The FBI had one main piece of advice to avoid this type of scam:
