U.S. authorities have seized more than $25 million in cryptocurrency tied to cross-border investment and romance scams, the Justice Department announced Tuesday — part of a broader crackdown that has now recovered over $800 million in illicit crypto.
What happened
- The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, working with the U.S. Secret Service Washington Field Office and the Cyber Fraud Task Force, filed five civil forfeiture complaints tied to separate investigations of fraudulent crypto investment platforms and online romance schemes.
- Investigators traced proceeds through hundreds of intermediary wallet addresses where illicit funds had been commingled with money from other victims, allowing them to identify and seize the crypto.
Key figures
- Total seized in these complaints: more than $25 million.
- Largest single complaint: roughly $12.1 million linked to romance scams that targeted more than 200 victims.
- A separate complaint flagged about $10.4 million identified by Canadian authorities across more than 270 suspected victim transactions.
- The three remaining cases range from about $285,000 to $2.4 million, including one where scammers posed as “recovery agents” offering to retrieve money stolen in an earlier fraud.
Where the operations were based
- Prosecutors say the launderers were mostly based in Southeast Asia, with IP addresses tied to China, Malaysia and Cambodia. U.S. officials describe these networks as part of an expanding “scam economy” in the region — a concern recently highlighted by Interpol.
- Authorities have also linked much crypto investment and romance fraud to forced-labor compounds in countries such as Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, where trafficked workers are reportedly coerced into defrauding victims worldwide.
Context and enforcement
- The seizures stem from the Scam Center Strike Force, launched in November 2025 by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro. Pirro said investigators “cut through complex laundering schemes” to reach the funds.
- The five investigations remain open. The recovered crypto pushes the strike force’s cumulative takedown past $800 million.
- These actions follow other major seizures: in October, U.S. and U.K. authorities charged Cambodia’s Prince Group and seized more than 127,000 BTC — then worth about $12 billion — marking the largest civil seizure and forfeiture in DOJ history.
Why it matters
- The latest forfeitures underline ongoing law enforcement efforts to trace and reclaim crypto assets used in large-scale international frauds, and highlight the continuing role of cross-border cooperation in disrupting organized scam operations that exploit digital currencies.
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