Crypto fraud accounted for 66% of all investment fraud reported in the UK last year, according to the police of City of London Police and National Reporting Center Action Fraud.
This percentage marks an increase of 16% compared to 2023, in which victims jointly lost a total of $ 830.4 million (£ 649 million), which means that crypto fraud in the UK residents cost around $ 549 million (£ 428 million).
While the total number of reports in action fraud fell by 7% in 2024, the total financial loss represented an increase of 13%.
The data also emphasizes how social media plays a central role for fraudsters, given that 36% of all reports refers to some social network.
WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram were the most popular social networks for scammers, good for 40%, 18% and 14% of all social media-related reports.
It is also important how 2% of all reported fraud concerned the imitation of known celebrities, whereby fraudsters make the use of AI-generated videos for Dupe victims.
The most common celebrity was the popular British financial guru Martin Lewis (44%), followed by Elon Musk (40%) and the British TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson (8%).
According to the police of the city of London, scammers are becoming increasingly advanced in their use of digital platforms and social media.
“Investment fraudsters will often be incredibly competent in what they do and will run a convincing and seductive pitch of how much money they can earn you, in often a short time,” said detective head inspector Oliver Little. “Don’t be seduced by the promise to earn ‘easy money’ because the world of shares and shares is anything but anything.”
The figures of Action Fraud on the growing prevalence of cryptocurrency fraud also find support from legal companies established in the VK, with James Pritchard-the head of private persecutions in Watson Woodhouse-Tellels Decrypt That his professional experience is an increase in crypto-related scams.
“Yes, I believe that cryptocurrency fraud is increasing in frequency,” he said. And what is especially interesting about Pritchard’s report on Cryptocurrency, and why it is increasingly being used in fraud, is that it explains how crypto the line between fiction and reality can fade.
“When I first started my career as a lawyer, I remember in the pre-Crypto days, a customer who came in to see me hold a letter that she had received from an African prince who needed her help to get his millions in the UK,” he said.
According to Pritchard, the client was “desperate” to believe what she was told, but it was “clear” part of a scam.
“But crypto is different,” he added. “Things that seem too good to be true have happened.”
As examples, Pritchard quotes how Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC paid for two pizzas in May 2010 (an amount that is now worth more than $ 770 million), and how some traders have made ‘astronomical’ profit.
“And fraudsters are chasing that,” he said. “They promise amazing return, but because of the nature of crypto I suspect that people are more inclined to believe those promises, while they might be a lot on his care if the promises in the form of a letter from an African prince came.”
Similarly, many things that can be considered red flags in more traditional investing-such as sending money to offshore entities-“run of the mill” in crypto, something that can again weaken the mutual defense against scams.
And for the scammers themselves, they are attracted to the anonymity of crypto and the convenience of global transfer, in which Pritchard suggests that the transparency of blockchains does not always lend itself to simple tracking.
He explained: “There are specialists who can trace such transactions, but it is not easy, and if the wallet can be returned to the source, depending on where the ultimate holder lives, persecution of legal steps can be exceptionally difficult, if not impossible.”
Such an analysis would suggest that the figures from Action Fraud for 2025 could reveal a further increase in cryptocurrency fraud, even if the authorities in the UK and elsewhere are more able to pick up stolen crypto.
This would fit with global figures of chain analysis, which in The latest crypto -crime report suggests that the income of cryptocurrency scam ramped internationally last year reached a record high of $ 12.4 billion.
Published by Stacy Elliott.
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