The FBI is taking a new approach to help save victims from cryptocurrency investment fraud. It's called Operation Level Up, and it's already saved thousands of victims more than $285 million. Victims reported losing nearly $4 billion to investment fraud related to cryptocurrency in 2023, according to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, Fox 26 Houston reports. Victims don't always stop interacting with scammers, even after reporting the scam. "They were promising outstanding returns," said a Florida man who reported he was duped in an investment scam. He described how he was duped by someone on a messaging service into investing $315,000 in a bogus online investment program. "People think it could never happen to you. But I’m an extremely pragmatic fellow, and it happened to me," he said.
In a few months, he says his account showed $6 million. "They were exaggerating the investment returns. That was one of the things that made me suspicious," he said. The FBI says investment scams are common. They say a scammer will send you messages over text or social media, befriend you, then bring up an investment opportunity. Sometimes they'll create fake websites, showing fake profits, or let victims withdraw some profits just to get them to invest more. "When we have people reporting being victims, we have victims reporting their losses, it allows us to look at the trends, the typologies, to match up the type of criminals that we see out there," said James Barnacle, FBI Deputy Assistant Director. Level Up says it has contacted 4,300 victims so far and stopped them from losing an additional $285 million.