The Most Common Crypto Scams (2026), With Receipts

By dollars lost, crypto investment fraud, which includes pig butchering. The FBI's IC3 logged $7.2 billion in crypto investment scam losses across 61,559 complaints in 2025, the largest single category in its April 6, 2026 report. By report volume, imposter scams lead at the FTC, with $3.5 billion in 2025 losses per its June 15, 2026 release.

In four steps. First, contact: a stranger reaches you through a dating app, social media, or a "wrong number" text. Second, grooming: weeks of friendly or romantic conversation with no ask. Third, the pivot: they mention their crypto trading success and walk you onto a platform they control, which shows fake profits and may even allow one small withdrawal to build trust. Fourth, the kill: when you try to withdraw real money, the site demands "taxes" or "fees," then goes dark. The CFTC's "Dating or Defrauding?" customer advisory describes this pattern, and the October 14, 2025 DOJ indictment of Prince Group's Chen Zhi, with roughly $15 billion in bitcoin seized, showed the industrial scale behind it.

The machines themselves dispense what they promise, but they are a preferred cash out tool for scammers because transfers are instant and irreversible. The FBI logged 13,460 kiosk related complaints and $389 million in losses in 2025, up 58 percent year over year (IC3 2025 report, April 6, 2026). The FTC found people over 60 were more than three times as likely to report a loss at one (Data Spotlight, September 3, 2024). The rule is simple: no government agency, utility, bank, or legitimate business will ever ask you to pay through a crypto ATM. If anyone directs you to one, it is a scam.

Stop all contact with the scammer, do not send another cent, and report immediately to the FBI at ic3.gov with the transaction hashes, wallet addresses, dates, and amounts. Speed matters: the FBI's Recovery Asset Team froze $679 million across roughly 3,900 actions in 2025 (IC3 2025 report, April 6, 2026), but freezes work best in the first hours and days. Also report to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and notify your bank or exchange. See the full 48 hour checklist below.

Sometimes, but treat recovery as the exception. Government action can claw funds back, as with the roughly $15 billion in bitcoin seized in the Prince Group case (DOJ, October 14, 2025) and a $225.3 million pig butchering seizure announced by DOJ on June 18, 2025, but seized funds take years to return to victims, if they return at all. Blockchain transactions themselves cannot be reversed. Anyone who guarantees recovery for an upfront fee is running the recovery scam described above (FBI IC3 PSA, June 24, 2024).

Three free lookups. First, search the California DFPI Crypto Scam Tracker at dfpi.ca.gov, a complaint based database of scam sites updated continuously since February 16, 2023, and useful no matter what state you live in. Second, check the CFTC's RED List of unregistered foreign entities at cftc.gov. Third, verify the exact URL against the company's registered filings; imposter sites typically change one or two characters. If a platform promises guaranteed returns, that alone settles it: the FTC states that guaranteed profit claims in crypto are a defining mark of fraud.

Almost certainly not. Major exchanges do not cold call customers, and no legitimate support agent will ever ask for your seed phrase, your 2FA code, or ask you to move funds to a "safe" wallet. Impersonation scam revenue grew roughly 1,400 percent year over year in 2025 (Chainalysis 2026 Crypto Crime Report, January 13, 2026), and a federal indictment unsealed in December 2025 targeted a ring impersonating Coinbase support. Hang up and contact the exchange yourself through its official app or website.

No. Any post, stream, or video promising to double crypto you send is theft, whether the account is hacked, fake, or a deepfake. The July 15, 2020 Twitter hack proved even verified accounts can carry the scam, and AI video has made fake streams cheaper since. The FTC lists giveaway and guaranteed multiplication promises among its definitional crypto scam red flags (ftc.gov consumer advice on cryptocurrency scams).

Speed, finality, and reach. Crypto transfers settle in minutes, cannot be reversed by any customer service department, and move across borders without intermediaries. That is why the FTC found bank transfers and cryptocurrency produced the highest aggregate fraud losses of any payment methods in 2025 (FTC Consumer Sentinel data, presented March 25, 2026), and why refund rights that exist for credit cards do not apply.

Crypto is a technology; the scams documented here are frauds that use it, the same way wire fraud uses banks. What the receipts show is concentration of harm: crypto was tied to $11.366 billion of the roughly $21 billion in 2025 US cybercrime losses (FBI IC3 2025 report, April 6, 2026). Whatever you think of the asset class, the payment rail deserves the same caution you would give a briefcase of cash.