Ponzi & Scams
By Dan Saada
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Investment Fraud Leads the Damage. Investment fraud was the single biggest driver. The FBI logged $8.
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Older Americans Take the Biggest Hit. Americans over 60 lost $4.4 billion to crypto fraud specifically.
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Big Enforcement Actions, Bigger Problems. Law enforcement isn't just playing defense. An Oklahoma man got five years in federal prison for…
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Americans got hit hard. Really hard. The Consumer Federation of America put out a report saying U.S. residents lost an estimated $80.
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The CFA's number is built on FBI complaint data, which logged $11.37 billion in crypto-related losses last year. That's already a 22% jump from 2024.
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Investment fraud was the single biggest driver. The FBI logged $8.6 billion in reported losses from that category alone. The CFA's adjusted estimate? $61.
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And it's not slowing down. If anything, the tools available to fraudsters are getting sharper.
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For the first time, the FBI broke out AI-enabled crimes as a separate tracking category. It logged $893 million in losses from 22,364 complaints tied to AI-assisted fraud.
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Americans over 60 lost $4.4 billion to crypto fraud specifically. That's nearly 40% of total crypto-related losses, concentrated in one demographic.
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More context: Ethereum and Solana Lost $3.1 Billion to Hackers in the First Half of 2026
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The FBI's Operation Level Up has been one of the more practical responses to that vulnerability.
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Law enforcement isn't just playing defense. An Oklahoma man got five years in federal prison for running a $9.4 million crypto Ponzi scheme.
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The biggest move, though, came from the Justice Department. It filed to forfeit 127,271 Bitcoin — valued at around $15 billion — from Chen Zhi, chairman of Prince Group, linked…
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On the platform side, the CFA went after Meta directly. The lawsuit targets Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, all named in the report as major venues for scam advertising.
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Related: Ionic Digital Jumps 26% on Nasdaq Debut, Hits $2.8 Billion Market Cap
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