Banks Hold Key to Uncovering Crypto Scam Finances

FinCEN has released an analysis of Bank Secrecy Act reports filed between September 2023 and December 2025, revealing that financial institutions may possess valuable signals to identify cryptocurrency investment scams. The report examined 33,904 reports involving approximately $12.7 billion in suspected digital asset scam activity.

According to FinCEN, the most useful fraud signal is not necessarily the cryptocurrency transaction itself, but rather the customer's balance sheet deteriorating in real-time. This can be seen through a sequence of transactions such as retirement accounts being liquidated, savings disappearing, and personal loans being requested.

The analysis found that money services businesses submitted 18,568 reports, representing $5.5 billion in suspected activity, while depository institutions filed 13,810 reports, accounting for an even larger $6.4 billion. Digital asset businesses frequently identified victims sending crypto to scammer-affiliated addresses, giving them visibility into the destination of the money.

Banks, on the other hand, saw customers transferring large sums between their own accounts, applying for loans and second mortgages, seeking other financing, and ultimately sending money to crypto businesses or scam-affiliated beneficiaries. FinCEN provided an extreme example of a customer who withdrew nearly $150,000 from a retirement account, opened a home equity line of credit, took out a personal loan, and refinanced a mortgage to generate money for suspected scammers.

The opportunity is not necessarily to invent another crypto-specific fraud model, but rather to connect signals financial institutions already possess. Behavioral analytics and artificial intelligence can potentially become useful in identifying combinations of ordinary financial decisions that become extraordinary when viewed together.