The Justice Department said on Wednesday that US law enforcement has located more than $225 million in cryptocurrencies that was purportedly taken from dozens of American victims as part of a complex investment fraud.
The government said that it was the largest-ever seizure of funds obtained through “crypto confidence” frauds, which trick individuals into investing in phony cryptocurrency schemes.
According to a complaint released on Wednesday, the scheme cost millions of dollars in losses and impacted over 400 individuals globally, including dozens of Americans. The Justice Department claims the crooks tried to launder the stolen bitcoin through “hundreds of thousands” of transactions.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Shawn Bradstreet, a special agent in charge at the Secret Service, stated that the US government now has the stolen cryptocurrency and would be trying to restore as much of it to victims as possible.
The amount of money lost to cryptocurrency investment scams has increased recently. The FBI reports that victims claimed over $4 billion in 2023 in losses from crypto-related investments, up from $2.57 billion in 2022. By 2024, it had risen to $5.8 billion.
In an effort to raise awareness that cryptocurrency investment scams have the potential to destroy the lives of Americans and their loved ones, the FBI and Secret Service are working harder. Last year, CNN covered a story about an 80-year-old American man who committed himself after losing all of his wealth to con artists.
Southeast Asian fraudster networks are responsible for a significant number of crypto confidence scams, often known as “pig butchering,” according to US law enforcement. According to a CNN investigation, several of the scams have been linked to sizable properties along the border between Thailand and Myanmar.
At least some of the fraudulent conduct in this case was linked to the Philippines by investigators. Bradstreet, the Secret Service agent, said in a statement that these schemes prey on trust and frequently cause victims to suffer from severe financial difficulties.
The raid on Wednesday is a positive indication for some US law enforcement authorities that the Trump administration would keep going after large networks of cryptocurrency fraudsters.
Some law enforcement officers were concerned that the new department leadership would not vigorously take on cryptocurrency scams after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the Biden administration in an April memo of using prosecutions to essentially impose regulations on the cryptocurrency industry.
Additionally, the memo dismantled the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team of the Justice Department, which was established by the Biden administration in 2022 to investigate illegal exploitation of cryptocurrency and other digital assets.
On Wednesday, however, Jeanine Pirro, the District of Columbia’s interim US attorney, stated during a press conference that prosecutors will pursue the con artists.
Pirro described crypto-related criminality as a “unregulated wild west.” “But it’s not just the unregulated Wild West. It’s the wild north, east, and south.
