Chainalysis Says AI Scams Drove Crypto Fraud up 17% in 2025

Crypto scams and fraud took in at least $14 billion on-chain in 2025, up from a revised total of $12 billion the previous year, Chainalysis said Tuesday (Jan. 13).

The 2024 figure was revised up from the $9.9 billion Chainalysis initially reported, and the 2025 figure could exceed $17 billion as the company identifies more illicit wallet addresses in the coming months, Chainalysis said in a Tuesday blog post.

Last year’s increase was driven by a surge in impersonation tactics and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, according to the post.

Impersonation scams, in which fraudsters pose as legitimate organizations or authority figures, saw year-over-year growth of 1,400%, the post said. Example seen in 2025 included scammers impersonating representatives of the E-ZPass electronic road toll collection system and the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange.

As of Tuesday, the home page of E-ZPass Group includes a banner saying that “there has been a major increase in fraudulent text & email messages being sent that appear to be from various toll agencies across the country including the E-ZPass Group stating there is money owed.”

AI-enabled scams were 4.5 times more profitable than traditional ones, according to the Chainalysis blog post. This form of fraud includes the use of tools such as face-swap software, deepfake technology and large language models. AI tools enable fraudsters to manage more victims at the same time and to make their scams more persuasive, the post said.

“While high-yield investment programs (HYIP) and pig butchering remain dominant categories by volume, we’re seeing increasing convergence across scam types as fraudsters leverage AI, sophisticated SMS phishing services, and complex money laundering networks to target victims more effectively than ever before,” Chainalysis said in the post.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) said in April that reported cryptocurrency fraud losses reached $9.3 billion in 2024, a 66% increase over the previous year. These losses stemmed from investment scams, extortion, sextortion and fraudulent activity involving cryptocurrency ATMs and kiosks.

Revolut said Tuesday that it added a call identification feature to its finance app to help combat impersonation scams. The company said the threat posed by this form of fraud has grown as scammers use AI-generated deepfake voices and increasingly sophisticated social engineering tactics.