Internet scammers are raking in more cash than ever before…and cryptocurrencies have provided them with great support.
According to the FBI’s recently released annual report, internet crime report(opens in new tab), $10.6 billion lost to online fraud and fraud in 2022. That’s a 46% increase for him from his $6.9 billion loss in 2021. Complaint Centers (IC3) actually decreased from the previous year.
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So what’s behind the $3.5 billion-plus surge from 2021 to 2022? The rise of cryptocurrencies.
The report found investment fraud overall to be the “most costly scheme”. Losses from investment fraud increased from $1.45 billion in 2021 to $3.31 billion last year, according to complaints to IC3.
But among these complaints, the report found that fraud specifically related to cryptocurrencies had the biggest growth, up 183% year-over-year.Crypto Fraud Losses Go From $907 Million In 2021 To A Tremendous Thing $2.57 billion 2022.
“Cryptocurrency investment scams have seen an unprecedented rise in victim numbers and dollar losses to these investors,” reads the report. The most targeted age group reporting this type of scam is victims between the ages of 30 and 49.”
Silicon Valley Bank explains: How Crypto is Affected.
Common crypto-related scams include hacked social media accounts, celebrity impersonations, real estate fraud, and crypto stolen through liquidity mining, according to the report. These are schemes that convince targets to connect their crypto wallets to their applications with the promise of making a profit. Instead, it depletes the funds from the user’s account.
Crypto scammers often target younger targets, but the largest pool of victims is the less tech-savvy demographic over 60. $3.1 billion in losses in 2022, according to the report. was due to them.
Investment fraud also resulted in the biggest losses, but many other types of Internet fraud were also influential. Call center fraud is the biggest threat to the aforementioned senior citizen, with total losses exceeding his $1 billion. $724 million of that came out of his 60+ target.
Business email compromise was another scam that proved fruitful for bad actors in 2022. This scam targets users’ business emails and uses social engineering techniques to trick victims into transferring funds. These scams cost $2.7 billion last year. Also, ransomware attacks are down for him in 2022, but still account for $34.3 million in losses for him.
It is important to note that the data here comes from over 800,000 complaints submitted to IC3 in 2022. The number may be higher because there are scam victims who do not report.
