FinCEN’s $12.7 Billion Crypto Scam Total Measures Activity, Not Losses

Between Sept. 8, 2023, and Dec. 31, 2025, institutions filed 33,904 Bank Secrecy Act reports that FinCEN linked to suspected investment scams involving digital assets. The filings described about $12.7 billion in financial activity, a measure of transactions flagged by institutions rather than money confirmed stolen from victims.

The review included filings that used a term from FinCEN’s 2023 scam alert. It counted them by filing date, so some transactions may have taken place before the review period. The filing count does not establish the number of separate scams.

The dollar total can include attempted and completed transactions, transfers between accounts, duplicate, inbound and outbound transactions, as well as amended filings and errors. It therefore cannot be treated as a loss total or a count of unique payments.

Money services businesses, chiefly in the digital asset sector, accounted for 18,568 filings and more than $5.5 billion in reported activity. Banks and other depository institutions submitted 13,810 filings involving about $6.4 billion. Banks may flag money used to buy digital assets, and crypto platforms may flag transfers to an address tied to a suspected scam.

Monthly filings increased from 590 in October 2023, the first full month after the alert, to 2,482 in December 2025. Wider use of the alert’s reporting term may explain part of the increase, so the filing trend by itself does not show how quickly scams grew.

A separate FBI measure for 2025 counted 61,559 cryptocurrency investment fraud complaints and more than $7.2 billion in reported losses. That measure covers one calendar year and victim complaints, while FinCEN’s review spans a longer period and counts financial institution filings. The totals cannot be added or subtracted to calculate losses.

Gene Lange, performing the duties of under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, called digital asset investment scams “one of the most significant fraud threats facing Americans today.” FinCEN’s companion alert urges institutions to evaluate warning signs in context; no single indicator establishes that a transaction is illicit.