Cryptocurrency scams received at least $9.9 billion on-chain in 2024, an estimate that will increase as more illicit addresses associated with fraud and scams in the coming months are identified, the 2025 Crypto Crime Report from New York-based blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis revealed.
In the last few years, crypto fraud and scams have continued to increase in sophistication, as the fraud ecosystem becomes more professionalized, the report said.
Operations such as Huione Guarantee, a peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace, offer a host of illicit services that support pig butchering scamming operations and serve as a one-stop-shop for scammers’ needs.
These services range from the technology infrastructure required to initiate scams to money laundering services for obfuscating illicit activity and cashing out, according to the report.
In the past year, high-yield investment scams (HYIS) and pig butchering scams received the most crypto among scam sub-classes, at 50.2 percent and 33.2 percent respectively.
Pig butchering scams (also known as investment or romance scams) target and build relationships with individuals, convincing them to invest in fraudulent opportunities, and predominantly originate via large scam compounds in Southeast Asia.
Read: Crypto platforms lose $2.2 billion in 2024 as hacking incidents rise: Report
Key highlights of the report include:
AI elevates scam complexity and effectiveness
- When comparing crypto flows from 2021 through 2024, based on a compound annual growth rate, the revenue of Huione scam infrastructure providers has increased exponentially.
- AI service vendors’ revenue grew by 1,900 percent, indicating an explosion in the use of AI technology to facilitate scams.
Pig butchering scams skyrocket
- Revenue from pig butchering scams grew nearly 40 percent YoY, while the number of deposits to pig butchering scams grew nearly 210 percent YoY.
“While pig butchering scams garner the most attention, large scam compounds are essentially havens for any type of scam that can be carried out via the internet, and it’s not uncommon to have multiple criminal groups operating within the same compound focusing on different scams,” said Eric Heintz, global analyst at International Justice Mission (IJM), a global organization that protects people in poverty from violence.
Growth across the fraud and scam ecosystem
In 2024, on-chain activity indicates that five scam types grew: pig butchering, address poisoning, crypto drainers, livestream, and blackmail/sextortion scams.
In 2024, pig butchering revenue grew nearly 40 percent YoY and the number of deposits to pig butchering scams grew nearly 210 percent YoY, potentially indicating an expansion of the victim pool.
Conversely, the average deposit amount to pig butchering scams declined 55 percent YoY. The combination of lower payment amounts and increased deposits could indicate a change in strategy for pig butchering scams.
Scammers could be spending less time priming targets, and therefore, receiving smaller payments, in exchange for targeting more victims, the report explained.
Generative AI software: Creating fake personas for scammers
While generative AI can accelerate legitimate innovation, it can also make scams more scalable and affordable for bad actors to conduct.
“GenAI is amplifying scams, the leading threat to financial institutions, by enabling high-fidelity, low-cost, and highly scalable fraud that exploits human vulnerabilities,” said Elad Fouks, head of fraud products at Chainalysis and co-founder of AI-powered fraud detection solution experts Alterya.
“It facilitates the creation of synthetic and fake identities, allowing fraudsters to impersonate real users and bypass identity verification controls.”
Alterya found that 85 percent of scams involve fully verified accounts that bypass traditional identity-based solutions.
With this technology, scammers can deceive targets into authorizing payments under false pretenses, often known as authorized push payment (APP) fraud.
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