Cryptocurrency scams cost Americans more than $5.6B last year: FBI
The FBI announced on Monday, Sept. 9, that Americans lost more than $5.6 billion in cryptocurrency scams in 2023.
Straight Arrow News
- Floridians lost over $1 billion to online scams in 2024, with seniors being the most targeted group.
- Investment and cryptocurrency scams led to the highest financial losses in Florida.
- Nationwide, internet crime complaints resulted in a staggering $16.6 billion in losses.
Be careful what you click on. There are more cases than ever reported of people actively trying to steal money online, according to a new FBI report, and Florida is a tasty target.
Floridians were scammed out of more than $1 billion in 2024, according to the latest annual Internet Crime Report the FBI released on April 25, up from $874.74 million the year before. The Sunshine State saw both the third-most complaints and the third-highest losses behind California ($2.5 billion) and Texas ($1.35 billion).
Nationwide, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) saw a “staggering” $16.6 billion stolen last year, up 33% from 2023, the report said.
“Scammers are increasingly using the Internet to steal Americans’ hard-earned savings,” the FBI’s Operations Director for Criminal and Cyber B. Chad Yarbrough wrote in the report. “And with today’s technology, it can take mere taps on a keyboard to hijack networks, cripple water systems, or even rob virtual exchanges.”
In 2024, the IC3 received 859,532 complaints regarding scams, fraud, and other suspected internet crimes, according to the report. The majority of reported losses — nearly 83% — were due to cyber-enabled fraud, which often involved the theft of money, data, or identity; or the creation of counterfeit goods or services, the IC3 found.
And that’s almost certainly an undercount of the total loss from cyber-enabled fraud and scams, according to Cynthia Kaiser, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division. The data only includes information from victims who reported it to the FBI.
The average loss per person was $19,372, the IC3 said.
FBI data revealed that the group that suffered the most losses was, by a wide margin, people over the age of 60.
Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill to allow financial institutions to delay suspicious-looking transactions from a senior citizen if someone at the institution had a reasonable belief the person was being scammed. The law went into effect on Jan. 1.
How were Americans scammed in 2024?
Losses from many traditional types of scams across the country remained steady or even dropped compared to the past two years, including credit card and check fraud, business email compromise (BEC), romance scams, identity theft, malware, phishing/spoofing, ransomware, and real estate scams. Public awareness and increased federal and state law enforcement efforts have helped curb these attempts, the IC3 said.
But the IC3 saw dramatic increases, some more than doubled, in employment scams, extortion, government impersonation, harassment/stalking, investment scams, lottery scams, non-payment/non-delivery scams, personal data breaches, and tech support scams.
Cryptocurrency fraud saw a 66% increase in losses with $9.3 billion taken nationwide, up from $3.8 billion in 2023. Extortion and sextortion also saw dramatic increases.
The report also noted that ransomware remained the largest threat to U.S. critical infrastructure in 2024, with complaints rising 9% from 2023. High-profile cyberattacks have prompted federal authorities to push for companies and organizations to beef up their security.
Here’s how scammers are stealing your money, and how to avoid it.
What are the biggest scams in Florida?
According to the IC3 reports, the top five scams reported in Florida in 2024 were:
- Personal data breach (4,539 complaints)
- Non-payment/non-delivery (4,045 complaints)
- Extortion (3,360 complaints)
- Cryptocurrency (3,348 complaints)
- Tech support (3,207 complaints)
What scams cost Florida residents the most in 2024?
According to the IC3 reports, the scams that cost Floridians the most money in 2024 were:
- Investment: $311,140,271
- Cryptocurrency: $276,612,303
- BEC: $193,828,560
- Cryptocurrency wallet: $114,307,372
- Tech support: $75,130,923
Who gets scammed the most in Florida?
People older than 60 are the hardest hit in the Sunshine State, the IC3 said. In 2024, seniors were taken for just under $300 million, nearly the same amount that was scammed from people of all other ages combined.
Florida Victims by Age Group in 2024
| Age Range | Count | Amount Loss |
|---|---|---|
| Under 20 | 1,087 | $1,787,350 |
| 20 – 29 | 4,001 | $16,748,696 |
| 30 – 39 | 5,055 | $67,306,014 |
| 40 – 49 | 5,667 | $98,758,557 |
| 50 – 59 | 4,836 | $109,284,029 |
| Over 60 | 8,141 | $293,878,430 |
What are investment scams?
Investment scams use deceptive practices to get you to make purchases based on false information from someone who appears to be a friend, a business partner, or even a celebrity. All you have to do to cash in on amazing investment opportunities and sure-fire, low-risk, guaranteed big payouts is to buy cryptocurrency and deposit it into a specific account, or link your existing investment account to their fake one, and suddenly, all your investment money is gone.
In 2024, investment fraud complaints increased by 21% over 2023, but losses increased nearly 69% to $6,570,639,864 reported, according to the IC3. Investment fraud that involved cryptocurrency continued to rise with $9.3 billion in losses in 2024, a 66% increase.
Some methods include:
- Offering big rewards by using liquidity mining (a way to lend assets to a decentralized exchange) that actually hooks the victim’s digital wallet to a fake account that can be wiped out.
- Hacking someone’s social media account and then contacting all the friends of that person with an amazing offer.
- Impersonating a celebrity to contact you out of the blue and entice you to invest.
- Setting up fake, but realistic-looking investment or banking websites to convince you that big money is being thrown around.
- Meeting people through dating sites, making a connection, and then asking for money or offering investment advice, or just texting random phone numbers and then, after apologizing for the wrong number, starting to talk about investments.
- Contacting a real estate agent to buy expensive property and then using large, fake bank accounts to convince their target that easy money can be made.
HOW TO AVOID BEING SCAMMED: Don’t trust anyone who approaches you unrequested with promises of making money with zero risk in the crypto markets. And remember that no legitimate business will demand you send cryptocurrency in advance for services or to protect your money.
“Advice and offers to help you invest in cryptocurrency are nothing but scams,” says the FTC.
What are cryptocurrency scams?
Cryptocurrency, a type of digital currency that usually only exists electronically, has seen rapid growth in the last few years, especially since President Donald Trump took office and began heavily promoting it for individuals and as part of the U.S. national reserves.
But because it only exists online (and because so many people are confused about what it is and how it works), cryptocurrency can be easy to steal. Cryptocurrency payments do not come with legal protections and they are generally not reversible.
Investment fraud that involved cryptocurrency continued to rise with $9.3 billion in losses in 2024, a 66% increase. Employment scams, which can include jobseekers applying to attractive job listings having to pay a fee in crypto to get hired, were up nearly 30% in 2024.
HOW TO AVOID BEING SCAMMED: No legitimate business or government will ever email, text, or message you on social media to ask for money, the FTC said. And they will never demand that you buy or pay with cryptocurrency.
What is BEC?
Business email compromise scams tend to be more sophisticated than other methods. They involve scammers gaining access to business email accounts and other communications and using them to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds. Because they target businesses and use increasingly legitimate-looking methods, BEC scams can steal the most money. In 2024, scammers drained nearly $2.8 billion from U.S. companies.
What do BEC scams look like?
BEC schemes often involve email addresses with slight variations from a trusted source — a coworker, your boss, a regular vendor — that fool you into thinking they’re legitimate. You might get a request from your company CEO to buy gift cards to send out as employee rewards (just give her the serial numbers, don’t worry, she’ll take care of sending them out). You might get requests from coworkers to give them access to internal systems, or your boss might need a password from you over the weekend.
And they will usually want you to act quickly.
HOW TO AVOID BEING SCAMMED: Be paranoid.
- Be careful what you share on social media and never mention childhood pet names, schools you attended, your birthday or other information a scammer can use to guess your passwords or security questions.
- Don’t click on anything in an unsolicited email or text message asking you to click to update or verify account information. Contact the company through other means to verify the request.
- Carefully examine the email address, URL, and spelling used in any correspondence. Scammers use slight differences to trick you.
- Never open an email attachment from someone you don’t know, especially if it was forwarded to you.
- Set up two-factor or multifactor authentication on any account you use that has it.
- Verify payment or account change requests directly with the person apparently making the request.
What are tech support scams?
“Call centers overwhelmingly target the elderly,” the IC3 said, “with devastating effects.”
Two categories of fraud, Tech/Customer Support, and Government Impersonation, account for over $2 billion in stolen money in 2024. People over 30 years of age suffer the most from it, with the majority of losses coming from people 60 and older.
What do tech support scams look like?
“Tech support scammers want you to believe you have a serious problem with your computer, like a virus,” the FTC said, “They want you to pay for tech support services you don’t need, to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.”
You may get called by a “computer technician” from a well-known company telling you they’ve found a problem with your computer and need remote access. You might get a pop-up warning when you visit a website, either with a link or a phone number you should call. And they’ll want you to pay with a gift card, cryptocurrency, or by wiring them money.
HOW TO AVOID BEING SCAMMED: Don’t believe them.
- If you get a phone call you didn’t expect from someone who says there’s a problem with your computer, hang up.
- Don’t trust security warnings on your computer or phone that asks you to call a phone number or click a link.
- Verify a tech support company before using them. Google the name of the company and the word “scam” to see if anyone has reported them.
What is a personal data breach?
What to do if your personal information is compromised
If your personal information is ever compromised due to a data breach, here’s what to do.
Damien Henderson, USA TODAY
Sometimes scammers get personal information wholesale by hacking into a database and taking it all, or a company may accidentally expose personal information where it can be publicly viewed. Suddenly, lots of people have your personal information and they can use it to get into your accounts or even apply for loans and credit cards.
What does a personal data breach look like?
You won’t know about it unless the breached company announces it, the media reports on it, you suddenly have compromised accounts, or your identity gets stolen. Americans lost $1.45 billion through personal data breaches in 2024.
A data breach in UnitedHealth Group in 2024 that crashed computer systems nationwide resulted in the theft of the personal records of about 190 million people, the health care giant said in February.
HOW TO AVOID BEING SCAMMED: If you are alerted that your information may have been part of a data breach, depending on what it was, you need to get ahead of it.
- If your Social Security number was stolen, immediately contact the credit bureaus to have fraud alerts or credit freezes placed in your reports. You can do this from the FTC’s IdentityTheft.gov site. Try to file your taxes early, before a scammer can.
- If your login info has been taken from an online account, log in immediately and change your password. If you can’t, contact the company to see how to recover or shut down the account. If that site has your credit card information saved, watch your account for any suspicious charges.
- If your debit or credit card number was stolen, contact your bank or credit card company to cancel it and request a new one. Watch your charges carefully.
- If bank account information has been stolen, close the account and open a new one.
- If your driver’s license information was stolen, contact your local DMV to report it. They may flag the number in case someone tries to use it or issue you a new one.
What are non-payment/non-delivery scams?
“In a non-delivery scam, a buyer pays for goods or services they find online, but those items are never received,” the FTC said. “Conversely, a non-payment scam involves goods or services being shipped, but the seller is never paid.”
Non-payment/non-delivery scams were one of the largest-growing scams in 2024, with $785 million in losses reported compared to $310 million in 2023.
What do non-payment/non-delivery scams look like?
Online auctions or sites with products whose prices seem too good to be true, would-be sellers who ask you to wire money directly to them, or pay with pre-paid gift cards. Some unscrupulous buyers create fake one-time accounts to get your merchandise or ask that you use certain methods to ship to avoid customs or taxes.
HOW TO AVOID BEING SCAMMED: Be suspicious.
- Pay attention to feedback ratings on auction websites. Avoid sellers with mostly bad ratings or no ratings at all.
- Verify that the site you’re buying from is legitimate. If the URL does not begin with ‘https,’ do not enter your information.
- Only use payment methods that are trustworthy and offer consumer protection, such as credit cards, PayPal, or another well-known online service.
- Always get tracking numbers for anything you buy online.
Contibuting: Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY
