FBI: The volume of investment crypto fraud grew by 53% in a year

The bureau also noted that scammers from other areas are increasingly turning to cryptocurrency

08.03.2024 - 08:50

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3 min

What’s new? Damages from fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes rose 53% year-over-year, from $2,57 billion to $3,94 billion, the FBI said in its 2023 Internet Crime Report. As part of these schemes, scammers convince victims to put money into investment projects with high returns. Back in 2022, the bureau described an increase in fraud involving fake crypto investment apps, including those purportedly designed to mine liquidity.

The FBI’s report

What else is known? In turn, experts from analytical blockchain company Chainalysis say that the amount of funds stolen as a result of fraudulent crypto investment schemes may actually be much higher than the data cited by the FBI, but in general, the figure has been trending downward globally since 2021.

According to the analysts’ February report, scams called Pig Butchering are leading the way in terms of average damage to victims with $4593 in 2023. These schemes are implemented by social engineering techniques and can also be categorized as investment scams.

Pig Butchering is aimed primarily at inexperienced investors. Under this scheme, attackers use social engineering to gain the trust of potential victims by imitating a friendly or even romantic relationship to then recommend investing in a controlled crypto platform in order to steal them.

In addition, the FBI noted that scammers from other areas are also increasingly using cryptocurrency to quickly distribute funds to controlled accounts.

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Earlier, Chainalysis reportedthat in 2023, scammers earned $241,6 million on the Pump & Dump scheme by launching 90 408 tokens based on the ERC-20 standard. This is 24,4% of the volume of tokens launched on the Ethereum blockchain and 53,6% of the projects deployed on decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

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