FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 7, 2026
CONTACT: Jarice Thompson, jarice@ourfinancialsecurity.org
Statement of Mark Hays, AFR and Demand Progress Associate Director, Crypto and Fintech, on new FBI Annual Report on Internet Financial Crime Losses to Crypto and other Scams:
Yesterday, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released its annual Internet Crime Report, which analyses complaints received from online financial crime survivors each year to determine the scope and scale of such criminal activity and who is most impacted by it.
The FBI’s report confirms something too many survivors of financial crime already know – we’re living in a golden age of online financial fraud driven by crypto.
The FBI received over 1 million online financial crime complaints last year, with reported losses totaling $22 billion. Half of all online financial crimes ($11.3 billion) involved crypto — an annual increase of nearly $2 billion. Americans over age 60 reported the most crypto-related losses of any age group. The average losses from these crypto scams exceeded $62,000. And these huge figures are likely an undercount; most financial crime survivors don’t report their losses out of shame, and the FBI’s figures don’t necessarily include the many crypto schemes — such as meme coins — that cause investors to lose millions while skirting the legal line.
Despite the surging crypto crimewave, the Trump administration has dismissed crypto enforcement cases, cut enforcement staff, loosened regulations, and pardoned crypto criminals. Congress is poised to supercharge crypto crime by pushing industry-crafted, loophole-laden legislation that would lock-in weak oversight and embolden crypto scammers.
Congress should be acting quickly to protect their constituents from this scam epidemic. Instead, the Senate is close to passing weak legislation that would fail to stop bad crypto actors, hamper state regulators’ efforts to pursue crypto criminals, and legitimize the industry’s bad practices that exposes investors and the financial system to more risk. Today’s report should remind policymakers that the best response to this epidemic of crypto scams isn’t acquiescence, but accountability. Passage of any bill that fails to meet that mark will make these problems worse, not better.
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