A report named Internet Crime Report has been published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the year 2022.
The FBI has revealed that they have collected the data from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which is their own department.
The particular department is responsible for collecting public feedback and data that is pertaining to the incidents and attacks that they suffer on the internet.
To be more precise, it is the cyberattacks and different kinds of internet-based attacks that the public reports through IC3.
Data Gathered through IC3
The bureau has claimed that the data shows that among all the internet and cyber scams, the most reported incidents were the investment scams involving cryptocurrencies.
According to the collected data, the value of the investment scams recorded from the crypto industry rose to $3.31 billion. The data is just for the year 2022 and it is more than double the amount recorded in 2021.
In the year 2021, the amount recorded that was lost to investment fraud was $1.45 billion. Compared to the year 2021, a 127% surge has been recorded in the year 2022.
To be exact, out of the total $3.31 billion of investment scams, $2.57 billion were directly related to the crypto industry. Back in 2021, the total amount lost to the crypto investment scams was $907 million.
The report shows that compared to the year 2021, a 183% surge has been recorded in the crypto investment scams in 2022.
Detailed Information about the Crypto Scams
The bureau has revealed that the number of crypto investment scam victims has surged tremendously compared to the previous. Simply put, the high increase in the number of victims of crypto investment scams was unprecedented.
Due to the scams, so many investors have ended up losing dollars and there was no stop to it throughout the year.
As a result of these scams, many investors who became the victims ended up getting buried under huge debts. The enormous debts have continued rising across the investment industry due to the rising number of investment scams.
People have suffered from huge losses and they are in no condition to take care of their debts.
Most Victimized Age Group
The data further reveals that the Millennials were the most targeted victims. It can also go the other way around that it was most of the Millennials who made the wrong choices.
Most of the victims of the crypto investment scams established through the IC3 are from ages 30-49.
Largest Scams from Crypto Industry
The FBI has also mentioned the particular categories of the scams that were the largest in terms of most funds stolen from the victims.
These categories included employment-related scams for the crypto industry. Then there were real estate scams, celebrity impersonations (giveaways), hacked social media accounts, and liquidity mining.
Warning by the FBI
Right after publishing the report, the FBI has taken it upon itself to ensure that the people in the US are well aware of these scams.
The authority wants to ensure that not many investors and people end up getting victimized by crypto scammers.
This is the reason why after publishing the report, the FBI issued a warning to the locals. The FBI has advised the locals to be very careful about the ongoing and rising number of scams in the crypto industry.
They have asked them to be very cautious and vigilant when interacting with crypto firms and any kinds of services that the industry has to offer.
It is highly likely that people may end up falling into traps and face huge losses investing money into crypto projects.
The industry is swarming with crypto scams and scammers. Their only goal is to steal funds from investors who do not have much knowledge about the crypto industry.
Such investors and people have to stay away from the crypto industry until they have a lot of knowledge about it.
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