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Crypto Scams Have Bilked People Out of More Than $1 Billion Since 2021

DUPED

The majority of people lost money in crypto investment scams, according to a new FTC report.

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Jakub Porzycki/Getty Images

People have lost more than $1 billion to crypto scams since the beginning of 2021, the Federal Trade Commission said in a report released Friday. More than 46,000 people reported to the FTC that they were scammed in cryptocurrency, and there’s no way to get that money back, the FTC said. Because crypto does not have any chargebacks, which allow people to report fraud and get their money back, or any centralized authority to flag suspicious activity, all crypto transactions are final. The vast majority of crypto scams were investment-related, and younger people aged 29 to 49 were three times as likely to fall for scams than older people, the FTC reported. More than half of the people who lost money also reported that the scammer messaged them on a social media app, the top ones being Instagram and Facebook.

Read it at Federal Trade Commission