DOJ Seizes $25M in Crypto Scam Funds, Tally Tops $800M
U.S. prosecutors seized more than $25 million in cryptocurrency linked to international fraud schemes, pushing a specialized task force's total recoveries past $800 million and underscoring the scale of crypto laundering routed through Southeast Asia.
U.S. prosecutors seized more than $25 million in cryptocurrency tied to international investment and romance fraud schemes. The Justice Department filed five civil forfeiture complaints on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., targeting illicit proceeds drained from thousands of victims across the United States and Canada.
The largest of the five cases targets $12.1 million connected to romance scams that defrauded more than 200 people. A separate $10.4 million pool was flagged by Canadian authorities across over 270 suspected victim transactions. The three remaining complaints seek amounts ranging from $285,000 to $2.4 million, including one scheme where fraudsters posed as recovery agents to extract additional funds from prior victims.
Investigators traced the stolen digital assets through hundreds of intermediary wallet addresses where the funds were commingled. In each case, the laundering activity originated in Southeast Asia, with IP addresses pointing to operators in China, Malaysia, and Cambodia. This regional concentration aligns with a growing scam economy frequently run from forced-labor compounds in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos.
The seizures represent the latest output of the Scam Center Strike Force, an interagency initiative launched in November 2025 by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro. The task force brings together the DOJ, FBI, Secret Service, and Treasury to dismantle transnational crypto fraud networks. With this latest action, the strike force's total recovered funds have surpassed $800 million.
Pirro stated that investigators "cut through complex laundering schemes" to reach the seized funds. The strike force's mounting tally highlights a sustained enforcement pressure on crypto-facilitated fraud. It follows a prior action in October when U.S. and UK authorities charged Cambodia's Prince Group and seized more than 127,000 BTC, then worth approximately $12 billion, marking the largest civil forfeiture in the DOJ's history.
For market participants and compliance officers, the cases reinforce the persistence of layered wallet structures used to obscure the origins of illicit crypto. Interpol has flagged these Southeast Asia-based networks as a global threat, signaling that regulatory scrutiny on cross-border digital asset flows will remain intense.
