Crypto fraud accounted for 66% of all investment fraud reported in the UK last year, according to City of London Police and national reporting center Action Fraud.
This percentage marks an increase of 16% over 2023, with victims collectively losing a total of $830.4 million (£649 million), meaning that crypto fraud cost UK residents some $549 million (£428 million).
While the total number of reports to Action Fraud declined by 7% in 2024, the total financial loss represented a 13% increase.
The data also highlights how social media plays an increasingly central role for fraudsters, given that 36% of all reports made reference to one social network or another.
WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram were the most popular social networks for scammers, accounting for 40%, 18% and 14% of all social media-related reports.
Also of note is how 2% of all reported frauds involved the impersonation of well-known celebrities, with fraudsters making using of AI-generated videos to dupe victims.
The most commonly impersonated celebrity was popular British finance guru Martin Lewis (44%), followed by Elon Musk (40%) and British TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson (8%).
According to the City of London Police, scammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of digital platforms and social media.
“Investment fraudsters will often be incredibly skilled in what they do and will spin a convincing and alluring pitch of how much money they can make you, in often a short amount of time,” said Detective Superintendent Oliver Little. “Do not be seduced by the promise of making ‘easy money’ as the world of stocks and shares is anything but.”
Action Fraud’s figures on the growing prevalence of cryptocurrency frauds also finds support from UK-based legal firms, with James Pritchard—the Head of Private Prosecutions at Watson Woodhouse—telling Decrypt that his professional experience bears out an increase in crypto-related scams.
“Yes, I believe cryptocurrency fraud is increasing in frequency,” he said. And what’s particularly interesting about Pritchard’s account of cryptocurrency, and of why it’s being increasingly used in fraud, is that it explains how crypto can blur the line between fiction and reality.
“When I first started my career as a solicitor, in the pre-crypto days, I remember a client coming in to see me clutching a letter she had received claiming to be from an African prince who needed her help getting his millions into the UK,” he said.
According to Pritchard, the client “was desperate” to believe what she had been told was true, but it was “clearly” part of a scam.
“But crypto is different,” he added. “Things that seem too good to be true have happened.”
As examples, Pritchard cites how Laszlo Hanyecz famously paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas in May 2010 (an amount now worth upwards of $770 million), and how some traders have made “astronomical” profits.
“And fraudsters prey on that,” he said. “They promise astonishing returns, but because of the nature of crypto I suspect people are more inclined to believe those promises, whereas they might perhaps be much more wary if the promises came in the form of a letter from an African prince.”
Likewise, many things that may be considered red flags in more traditional investing—such as sending money to offshore entities—are “run of the mill” in crypto, something which again may weaken would-be defenses against scams.
And for the scammers themselves, they’re drawn to the anonymity of crypto and ease of global transfer, with Pritchard suggesting that the transparency of blockchains does not always lend itself to easy tracking.
He explained, “There are specialists who can trace such transactions, but it is not easy, and if the wallet can be traced back to source depending on where the ultimate holder resides, a prosecution of legal action may prove exceptionally difficult, if not impossible.”
Such analysis would suggest that Action Fraud’s figures for 2025 may reveal a further increase in cryptocurrency fraud, even if authorities in the UK and elsewhere are becoming more capable of retrieving stolen crypto.
This would fit with global figures from Chainalysis, which in its latest crypto crime report suggests that cryptocurrency scam revenue internationally may have reached a record high of $12.4 billion last year.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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