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HOUSTON — Crypto is exploding, and so are the scams. New data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shows Texas leads the country in complaints.
In the last three years (September 2022 – September 2025), Texans filed 6,546 complaints, followed by California (5,458) and Georgia (3,905). That’s thousands of people who say they were misled, cheated, or tricked while investing in digital currency.
Chris Bronk, PhD, Associate Professor at the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs, said he is not surprised by the number of consumer complaints in Texas.
“We have a weak regulatory regime. Texas has really encouraged crypto mining in the state. This is a very bullish state on this technology. And unfortunately, the state has not enacted the kind of defenses that would be needed to protect individual investors from malicious parties who are using this stuff for their criminal, armed enterprises,” Bronk said.
The cybersecurity expert said that, as a result, there are no effective solutions available to victims who may have already fallen victim to cryptocurrency scams. His recommendation is to invest your money elsewhere.
“If you’re going to start getting into the cryptocurrency investing world, you may want to, you know, choose how to do that through a major financial institution that does provide some sort of guarantee. But I don’t think those guarantees are really there. This is still the wild west, and frankly, this is just digital data. It can be erased, it can disappear. It is not the most resilient place to put your life savings,” Bronk said.
Bronk added that crypto transactions are hard to trace and almost impossible to reverse, which makes it easy for scammers to cash out and tough for victims to get their money back.
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