FBI: Digital Currency Investment Scams Surge 53% in 2023

The FBI's Cybercrime Complaint Center (IC3) received more than 880,400 complaints in 2023, involving more than $12.5 billion in potential damages.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) revealed that losses from digital currency investment scams increased from $25.7 billion in 2022 to $39.4 billion in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 53%.

According to the FBI's 2023 Internet Crime Report, criminals are finding more ways for victims of fraud to promise good returns on their investments.

Digital Currency Investment Scams Surge in 2023

The FBI's Cybercrime Complaint Center (IC3) received more than 880,400 complaints in 2023, involving more than $12.5 billion in potential damages. Compared to 2022, complaints and losses increased by 10% and 22%, respectively.

"As impressive as these numbers may seem, we know that their views on cybercrime in 2023 remain open," the agency said. As you can imagine, when the FBI recently infiltrated the infrastructure of the Hive ransomware group, we found that only about 20% of victims reported it to law enforcement agencies. More reports of victims will mean that the FBI has deeper insight. ”

Investment fraud caused the highest losses, increasing from $3.31 billion in 2022 to $4.57 billion in 2023, with digital currency investment scams accounting for $3.94 billion of that.

Digital Currency Scam Targets Business Email

In addition to the losses caused by digital currency investment scams, IC3 received 21,489 complaints of business email compromise (BEC), totaling more than $2.9 billion in losses.

The FBI explained, "BEC is a sophisticated scam targeting businesses and individuals who make money transfers. This scam often occurs when a subject compromises a legitimate business email account through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques in order to make unauthorized transfers of funds. ”

Although the BEC program initially involved requests for W-2 information and vendor emails, IC3 found that scammers have started using escrow accounts on cryptocurrency exchanges or third-party payment processors. The FBI insists that this new development highlights the importance of using multi-factor authentication as an extra layer of security.

At the same time, the FBI acted swiftly through IC3's Asset Recovery Team (RAT) to stop some of the scams. The RAT implemented the Financial Fraud Blocking Chain (FFKC) program on 3,008 incidents with potential losses of $758 million and froze $5,383.9 million, with a 71% success rate.