Data Shows Consumers Have Lost $5.6 Billion in Cryptocurrency in 2023

According to a new report by the FBI, $5.6 billion in cryptocurrency were lost to criminals in 2023, which is a 45% increase from 2022. It is the first time that the FBI has shared a report about cryptocurrency. The FBI received more than 69,000 complaints about cryptocurrency fraud last year, and this makes only 10% of total financial fraud complaints to the FBI.

In a call with a journalist, the FBI said that the reason why complaints about crypto fraud have increased a lot is because many people are no longer hesitant to report crypto crimes. The other reason is that many people believe that they can become rich by investing in crypto, including criminals. So other types or crimes, like ransomware and hacking are also related to cryptocurrency somehow. According to the report, most criminals stole cryptocurrency through investment fraud, with $3.96 billion lost last year. There were approximately 5200 reports in each age range (30-39 and 40-49) which reported investment frauds in cryptocurrency.

Most criminals do investment frauds by fake apps or sites which look real, and lure customers to invest in crypto. Slowly, they look into users’ funds and then steal the money from them. Another crypto fraud quite common nowadays is pig butchering in which criminals strike a romantic relationship with a victim and then ask them to invest in crypto after they gain their trust. Pig Butchering scam is often done by sending the victim a message, email or direct message on social media and then they slowly try to befriend them. It takes many weeks and months to befriend a person or do any romantic advances at them, but once the victim becomes comfortable, they bring out the talk of investing in crypto.

The report also noted that victims can get scammed more than once. If they have lost their crypto money to scammers, victims immediately look for some platforms that can help them recover their funds. So the fraudulent crypto businesses give the surety to victims that they will be able to help them recover their cryptocurrency but take more from them. The FBI asks all the cryptocurrency traders to always look out for scammers and only do an investment if they completely trust the person or have met them in person.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World