FBI 2025 Crime Report: Americans Lost $20.9 Billion, Crypto Fraud Jumped 48%

Key Findings

The FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report, released April 2026 by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), set four new records in a single year. Total reported losses reached $20.877 billion, a 26% increase over 2024. The IC3 crossed 1 million complaints for the first time in its 25-year history. Investment fraud led all categories at $8.6 billion in losses. And cryptocurrency-specific fraud, which is now dominated by pig butchering schemes, reached $11.366 billion overall with crypto investment fraud alone at $7.2 billion. Complaint volume for crypto investment fraud jumped 48% year over year. This is the ScamVerify™ breakdown of what the 2025 report means for US consumers.

The Headline Numbers

2025 Metric	Value	Change from 2024
Total IC3 complaints	1,008,597	First year ever over 1M
Total reported losses	$20.877 billion	+26%
Investment fraud losses	$8.6 billion	#1 loss category
Business email compromise losses	$3.0 billion	#2 loss category
Tech support scam losses	$2.1 billion	#3 loss category
Cryptocurrency-related losses (all types)	$11.366 billion	+22%
Cryptocurrency investment fraud	$7.2 billion	Complaint volume +48%
AI-nexus complaints	22,364	$893M in adjusted losses
Ransomware losses	$32.3 million	+259%

For reference, the full 2025 IC3 Annual Report PDF is available from the IC3 website.

The Story Behind the Numbers

1. Investment Fraud Is Now the Apex Predator

Investment fraud at $8.6 billion is more than the combined losses from the next two categories (BEC at $3.0B and tech support at $2.1B). Within investment fraud, cryptocurrency is the vehicle of choice: $7.2 billion of the $8.6 billion investment total was crypto-specific, meaning fake trading platforms, pig butchering schemes, and fraudulent token offerings.

The 48% jump in crypto investment fraud complaint volume (year over year) is faster than the 26% jump in total complaint volume, meaning this category is pulling the whole number up. Pig butchering is the engine of the 2025 cybercrime economy.

2. One Million Complaints Is a Structural Milestone

IC3 started logging complaints in 2000. For the first 24 years, annual volume stayed under 1 million. 2025 crossed that threshold. Two things drive it:

More victims. Actual fraud volume is rising, confirmed by matching increases in FTC, FCC, and state-level data.
More reporting. IC3's victim-outreach initiatives (Operation Level Up, Operation Shamrock partnerships, FBI victim specialists) surface cases that would previously have gone unreported.

Both effects compound. The FBI now estimates that reported losses capture only 15 to 20% of actual cybercrime losses, meaning the true 2025 figure is closer to $100 to $139 billion.

3. AI Is Already Showing Up in the Data

The 2025 report is the first to formally track AI-nexus complaints. 22,364 complaints in a single year, $893 million in losses. The AI tactic mix includes:

Voice cloning used in grandparent and CEO-impersonation scams
Deepfake video in pig butchering "live" video calls
AI-generated romance personas for dating-app fraud
LLM-written phishing emails that bypass content filters
AI-assisted spear-phishing for business email compromise

The $893 million figure is almost certainly undercounted. Victims often do not know whether the voice or face they interacted with was AI-generated. The FBI flags cases only when AI use is explicitly confirmed.

4. Ransomware Losses Jumped 259% (But the Number Is Small)

Ransomware losses reached $32.3 million in 2025, up from $12.5 million in 2024. That sounds dramatic, and the percentage is, but the absolute number is tiny compared to investment fraud. Two caveats:

IC3 tracks only ransom payments that victims report. Most organizations pay quietly and do not file.
The FBI's 2025 ransomware number excludes business interruption costs, recovery spending, and downstream impact. Industry estimates for total ransomware cost run $20 to $45 billion annually.

Ransomware is a serious threat but not a consumer threat the way pig butchering is.

5. Phishing Is Most Common, Not Most Costly

Nearly 20% of all IC3 complaints in 2025 were phishing or spoofing. Phishing wins on volume but is not in the top three for dollar losses. Phishing is often the entry point for a larger attack (the initial credential theft that enables a BEC compromise, or the initial "wrong number" that starts a pig butchering relationship) rather than the attack that extracts the money directly.

What This Means for Consumers

If you are 60 or older, you are the primary target

The 2025 report confirms what ScamVerify data has been tracking: consumers 60 and over accounted for more complaints and significantly more losses than any other age group. Senior victims average losses per incident 3x higher than victims under 40. Tech support scams, in particular, disproportionately hit older consumers.

See our guide: Seniors Lose 3x More to Phone Scams.

If you use cryptocurrency, assume every unsolicited pitch is fraud

$7.2 billion in crypto investment fraud is not a rounding error. Every unsolicited contact that mentions a trading platform, an uncle or mentor with a system, a guaranteed-return opportunity, or an account that already "has money waiting for you" is fraud. Full stop. See Cryptocurrency Investment Phone Scams for the full pattern breakdown.

If someone is pressuring you about a "tax payment" or "release fee" on a crypto account, do not pay

This is the final stage of the pig butchering script, as documented in leaked compound materials. Once a victim tries to withdraw their gains, the fake platform demands fees that never end. No legitimate platform charges fees to release your own funds.

FBI Operation Level Up

The IC3 report highlighted one proactive program worth noting. Operation Level Up uses FBI analysts to identify probable pig butchering victims from pattern data, then contact them directly before they complete the wire transfer.

Operation Level Up Metric	Value
Victims notified in 2025	3,780
Estimated losses prevented	$225.8 million
Percent of notified victims who were unaware they were being scammed	78%

The 78% figure is the critical one. Three out of four pig butchering victims contacted by the FBI genuinely believed their scammer was a real person and their investment was real. Awareness is not built into the victim experience. External intervention is required.

You can proactively report suspected pig butchering activity to the FBI at IC3.gov.

Why the 2025 Report Matters for 2026

Three projections based on the 2025 data.

Pig butchering losses will exceed $10 billion in 2026. Crypto investment fraud grew 48% in complaint volume last year. If loss growth tracks, 2026 ends at $10.7B for this category alone. The compound infrastructure in Southeast Asia is expanding (see our scam compound investigation), and the recruitment funnel, measured by FTC "work from home" complaint volume, is up 69% week over week in our most recent data.

AI-nexus complaints will 5x by end of 2026. The $893M 2025 AI-loss figure captures only cases where AI use was explicitly confirmed. As voice cloning and deepfake tools commoditize, the share of fraud involving AI components will expand faster than the explicit confirmation rate.

Senior-targeted fraud will stay the highest per-victim loss category. No 2025 intervention is changing the fundamentals of senior vulnerability: higher assets, lower digital-scam literacy, greater likelihood of live-phone engagement.

What You Can Do Right Now

Subscribe to FBI IC3 alerts at IC3.gov for timely warnings on emerging scam types.
Verify every suspicious phone number, text, email, or URL at ScamVerify. Our database aggregates FTC, FCC, URLhaus, ThreatFox, and community-report data across 14.9M+ threat records.
Report any fraud to IC3. Reporting is the only way these numbers get tracked. Every complaint feeds the data that enables law enforcement action.
Talk to older family members. Operation Level Up data confirms that external awareness is the single most effective intervention. Four out of five pig butchering victims do not recognize they are being scammed until someone else tells them.