GoKawiilThe fake package text. The too-good-to-be-true investment offer. The stranger in your DMs who quickly starts asking for money. Online scams have become a routine part of everyday internet use, and a new report estimates they may be costing Americans nearly $150 billion a year.
Americans lost an estimated $148.2 billion to online scams and cybercrime in 2025, according to a new report from the Consumer Federation of America. That’s nearly 26% more than in 2024 and roughly three times the losses recorded four years earlier.
The exact amount is impossible to know, and that is partly the point of the report. Americans reported approximately $20.9 billion in losses to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center last year. The Consumer Federation of America estimates the true total is more than seven times higher because most victims never report their losses to law enforcement.
The organization based that calculation on a 2017 federal survey that found only around 14% of financial fraud victims reported the crime to police. Applying that reporting rate to the FBI’s 2025 figures produces the much larger $148.2 billion estimate.
That doesn’t mean every American household lost money to a scam last year. But it does suggest the official figures capture only a fraction of the problem — and that even the FBI’s more conservative estimates show scam losses are climbing rapidly.
Crypto scams dominate
More than half of the losses reported to the FBI involved cryptocurrency. Victims reported losing nearly $11.4 billion in crypto-related incidents, up about 22% from the previous year. The Consumer Federation of America estimates the true cost could be closer to $80.7 billion.
Crypto is especially useful to scammers because payments can be difficult to reverse, and funds can be quickly moved through multiple wallets. Many victims are first targeted through fake investment opportunities, social media ads, dating apps or messages from scammers posing as businesses or government agencies.
Investment fraud was the most costly category in the FBI’s data, accounting for more than $8.6 billion in reported losses. Compromised business email and tech support scams followed at roughly $3 billion and $2.1 billion, respectively.
AI is making familiar scams easier
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