New York Consumer Alert Flags AI Bitcoin (BTC) Scams Behind $8B Losses

New York Flags $8B in Investment Scam Losses

The New York Department of State's Division of Consumer Protection issued a formal alert on August 26 warning residents that AI-generated voices, cloned video and polished social-media advertising are making fraudulent crypto investment pitches harder to spot. The figures behind the notice are stark: 144,041 consumers reported investment-scam losses exceeding $8 billion in 2025, a 38% jump from 2024, with a median reported loss of $10,560 per victim. That volume made investment fraud the single costliest scam category tracked by the Federal Trade Commission last year. An earlier FTC consumer alert, published in April, put 2025 losses above $7.9 billion and the individual median above $10,000, and explicitly named cryptocurrency — alongside stocks and forex — as an asset class fraudsters push through bogus coaching services that promise to teach victims copy trading and other strategies. The division's notice stresses how these schemes begin: a message on social media, a dating-app conversation, a text, an email or a web advertisement that builds rapport before any money moves. Fraudsters then impersonate real companies, directing targets into crypto markets that do not actually exist, while advertised tokens and coins serve purely as vehicles to extract funds. New York Secretary of State Walter T. Mosley framed the warning bluntly, cautioning that scammers may use artificial intelligence or other tools to craft increasingly sophisticated and realistic messages designed to steal hard-earned savings — and that anything too good to be true is likely a scam. The state's official consumer alert on AI investment scams advises consumers to verify who is promoting the offer, confirm the company and the investment itself, and establish where the funds are actually going before transferring anything.

FBI Logs $11B in Crypto-Related Losses

Separate federal data shows crypto has become the dominant settlement rail for online fraud. FBI figures for 2025 put total internet-crime losses at roughly $21 billion, of which crypto-related complaints — 181,565 of them — accounted for more than $11 billion. Complaints flagged as AI-related numbered 22,364, carrying associated losses of approximately $893 million. New York Attorney General Letitia James issued her own investor alert on April 6 focused on Meta's platforms, warning that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have become distribution channels for deepfake celebrity endorsements, fraudulent tokens, pump-and-dump operations and fake trading platforms — a mechanism she described as scammers exploiting the names of trusted financial figures and celebrities to steal residents' savings. The mechanics repeat across cases: victims are shown professional-looking apps with fabricated account balances, earnings and transaction history; some operators permit a small initial withdrawal to establish credibility before pressuring the target to deposit large sums, or demanding “taxes and fees” before any funds are released. The pattern is global. Australian regulators recently dismantled 3,106 fraudulent crypto investment platforms in a single fiscal year, and investigators there documented one operation built around an entirely fictitious token — complete with fake trading screens, fabricated news coverage and chatbots posing as support staff — that cost one woman nearly $74,690 before the network was exposed. Regulators converge on the same red-flag list: guaranteed returns, unsolicited offers, high-pressure tactics and missing documentation. Holding funds in self-custody hardware such as a Tangem mobile wallet limits exposure to compromised platforms, and the same legitimacy scrutiny applied to mobile-mining schemes like Pi Network — checking corporate registration, official channels and withdrawal terms — should precede every transfer, especially versus regulated retail brokers like Robinhood. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

Borrowed Trust, Not New Technology

COINOTAG's reading of the primary documents — the state alert, the FTC data and the FBI's 2025 crime figures — is that the throughline is not a novel exploit but borrowed trust: AI lowers the cost of faking credibility, while crypto provides instant, irreversible settlement. Notably, the New York notice names no specific coin, exchange or project, because the attack surface is impersonation itself. Until independent verification becomes routine before every deposit, the $8 billion reported for 2025 should be read as a floor, not a ceiling — a point worth checking against the fee structures and registration status of any venue in a best crypto exchanges comparison before funds move.