Investment scams became the costliest fraud category tracked by the Federal Trade Commission in 2025, with more than $8 billion in reported losses rising 38% from 2024 after 144,041 consumers filed complaints and the median loss reached $10,560. New York’s Department of State issued a formal consumer alert on AI-powered investment scams, while the state’s Division of Consumer Protection warned on Aug. 26 and an FTC April alert put the same-year total above $7.9 billion with a median individual loss above $10,000. Artificial intelligence lets fraudsters clone voices, fabricate celebrity endorsements and produce polished video ads that funnel targets toward counterfeit trading platforms showing fabricated gains—a pattern known as pig butchering—often via social media, dating apps, texts, emails or online ads, with fake cryptocurrency projects a recurring vehicle. Victims who encounter schemes through dating apps tend to suffer higher individual losses, and romance-investment fraud is among the fastest-growing subcategories; a related 2025 case saw federal prosecutors charge a tech CEO with raising more than $40 million by misrepresenting AI product capabilities. New York Attorney General Letitia James has flagged deepfake celebrity endorsements, fraudulent cryptocurrencies, pump-and-dump operations and fake platforms on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, while Secretary of State Walter T. Mosley urged caution on too-good-to-be-true offers. Australian regulators dismantled 3,106 fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platforms in the 2026 financial year, and FBI data put reported cybercrime losses at $20.877 billion, including $11.37 billion involving cryptocurrency. Officials advise verifying platforms through regulatory registries, rejecting guaranteed-return pitches and reporting suspected fraud to the FTC, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the SEC or the New York Attorney General.