US crypto scam losses nearly doubled in 2022

In 2022, the average crypto scam victim in the US lost $86k¹, while total losses reached a staggering $2.3B. According to the FBI’s 2022 Internet Crime Report, “Fraudsters are more frequently utilizing custodial accounts held at financial institutions for cryptocurrency exchanges, or having victims send funds directly to cryptocurrency platforms where funds are quickly dispersed”². This has resulted in a nearly two-fold increase in US crypto scam losses, with one state seeing a staggering 84-fold increase.

Key insights

• In 2022, crypto scam losses in the US were nearly double the amount reported in 2021. Losses skyrocketed from $1.2 billion to an alarming $2.3 billion, marking an 88% increase.
• 28 states witnessed especially high surges in crypto scam losses, with increases of over 90%. Some states experienced jumps of several hundred percent. South Dakota recorded the sharpest rise, with losses surging a staggering 84 times (although the victim count in South Dakota was relatively low compared to other states). New Mexico followed closely with a 7.5-fold increase, trailed by Delaware (7x), Kentucky (5.2x), and Iowa (5x).
• Contrary to the situation in the United States, the global landscape paints a different picture. Crypto scam losses in the rest of the world have gone down, amounting to a 2-fold decrease from $373 million in 2021 to $179 million in 2022.
• Intriguingly, the victim count in the United States has slightly decreased, meaning that the increase in total losses from crypto scams is the result of higher average losses. In 2022, victims of crypto-related scams in the United States faced an average loss of $86k, more than double the average loss of $43k in 2021. In contrast, individuals in the rest of the world experienced a decrease in average losses, with figures dropping from $64k to $41k.

Methodology and sources

This study used open-source information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The analysis includes the 2022 and 2021 Internet crime reports’ data on internet crimes in 50 US states and the District of Columbia, as well as globally, that had the descriptor “Cryptocurrency”, meaning that the crime involved the use of cryptocurrency. The term “crypto scam” refers to an internet crime where cryptocurrency was used as a medium or tool to facilitate the crime. Aggregated data was analyzed according to personal financial losses, as well as the overall financial losses and victim count. Numbers for other countries were derived by subtracting US values from the global ones.

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