The sources used here point to a small number of crypto investment scam signs. One is that many investment scams start with unlicensed people or unregistered firms. Another is that a crypto payment usually comes back only if the person you paid sends it back. "Pig butchering" is the name the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) uses for a virtual currency investment scam it issued an alert about. This explainer covers what the U.S. sources say and what the reported numbers can and cannot tell you.
What "pig butchering" means in the FinCEN alert
FinCEN issued an alert about a virtual currency investment scam known as "pig butchering," according to the FinCEN news release announcing the alert.
The material reviewed for this article includes only that one claim about the alert. It does not cover how the scheme works, how victims are contacted or what the alert asks financial institutions to do. To keep to the evidence, this article does not fill those gaps with descriptions from elsewhere. If you want the details, read the full alert on the FinCEN site.
The term is useful mainly as a label. FinCEN's alert uses it for a virtual currency investment scam.
Crypto investment scam losses reported to the IC3
The figures below come from the FBI press release on its 2025 Internet Crime Report. They are complaints and losses reported to the IC3, not a full count of all crime or all victims.
| Figure in the FBI release | Reported value |
|---|---|
| Losses to cyber-enabled crimes, 2025 report | nearly $21 billion |
| Total IC3 complaints | 1,008,597 (up from 859,532 in 2024) |
| Cyber-enabled fraud complaints | about 453,000, with reported losses of more than $17.7 billion |
| Share of all scam-related losses from investment fraud | nearly 49% |
| Complaints involving cryptocurrency | 181,565, totaling more than $11 billion |
| Losses reported by Americans over 60 | about $7.7 billion, up 37% from 2024 |
According to the release, complaints involving cryptocurrency reported the highest losses. Keep in mind how these numbers were collected. They depend on who chose to file a complaint and what each person reported, so they describe reports, not every case that happened.
The release does not say how many of these complaints involve pig butchering specifically. This article does not connect the FinCEN alert to the IC3 figures, because neither of the claims used here makes that connection.
Investment scam signs in FTC data: unlicensed people and unregistered firms
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also tracks investment scams through reports. The FTC consumer alert on spotting and avoiding investment scams says FTC data shows reports of more than $7.9 billion in losses to investment scams in 2025, with a median individual loss of more than $10,000.
A median is the middle value. Half of the reported individual losses fall below it and half fall above it, so one very large loss does not move it much. The two sets of figures measure different things, so they should not be added together or compared directly.
The same FTC alert says many investment scams start with unlicensed people or unregistered firms. In practice, that suggests one question to ask about any crypto investment offer: who is the person or firm behind it, and are they licensed or registered? The FTC claim does not say that every unlicensed seller is a scammer, or that registration guarantees safety. It only says that many investment scams start this way.
If AI claims are part of the pitch, TribeAI's explainer on what an AI trading bot scam looks like in SEC cases covers that pattern.
Why paying with crypto changes what happens after a scam
The FTC guide on what to know about cryptocurrency scams explains three features of cryptocurrency that matter if something goes wrong:
- No government insurance. Cryptocurrency held in accounts is not government-insured the way U.S. dollars in an FDIC-insured bank account are.
- A public record. Cryptocurrency transactions are typically recorded on a public ledger called a blockchain.
- Limited ways to get money back. After paying with cryptocurrency, you can usually get your money back only if the person you paid sends it back.
If the person you paid is the scammer, the FTC's description implies that getting the money back would usually depend on that same person. That is why the time to check an offer is before you pay, not after.
The insurance point concerns U.S. dollars in FDIC-insured bank accounts. It is a U.S. comparison, and readers elsewhere should check how deposit protection works where they live.
Operation Level Up and AI-related complaints
The FBI press release on the 2025 Internet Crime Report also reports two further items.
First, the release says that since it began, Operation Level Up has notified more than 8,000 victims and reduced losses by more than $500 million. These are the FBI's own figures as reported in the release. This article has no independent measure of them.
Second, the IC3 report has a section on artificial intelligence. It covers 22,364 complaints that cost Americans nearly $893 million. The claim does not break these complaints down by scam type, so this article does not say how many involve crypto investment schemes.
For impersonation that uses synthetic voices or video, see TribeAI's guide on what officials say to check in deepfake and voice-clone fraud.
How to read these pig butchering and crypto scam figures
The numbers in this article come from three U.S. government sources. Each one measures something different:
- IC3 figures in the FBI press release are complaints and losses reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center.
- FTC figures in the FTC investment scam alert are reports of losses to investment scams made to the FTC.
- The FinCEN alert, described in the FinCEN news release, names pig butchering as a virtual currency investment scam. The claim used here contains no loss figure.
All three are U.S. sources and U.S. reporting channels. Their figures describe reports from the United States and should not be read as global totals. Words such as "nearly," "about" and "more than" appear because the sources use them. They show that the figures are rounded or given as a minimum.
Limits of this article
This article is educational information about crypto investment scams based on a small set of U.S. government sources. It is not investment advice and does not recommend any product, platform or asset. It does not explain in detail how pig butchering schemes operate and does not cover reporting channels or rules outside the United States.