US seizes over $25 million in crypto from Southeast Asian scam networks
- Federal prosecutors in Washington filed five civil forfeiture complaints seeking more than $25 million in cryptocurrency stolen from fraud victims.
- The money is part of over $800 million recovered by the Scam Center Strike Force, which targets Chinese-linked crypto scam operations based in Southeast Asia.
- The government says it will try to return the seized funds and is still hunting the people behind the networks.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Secret Service Washington Field Office filed five civil forfeiture complaints on July 21, 2026. The complaints seek to forfeit over $25 million in cryptocurrency stolen from thousands of fraud victims in the United States and Canada.
Each complaint is tied to a separate investigation by the Secret Service’s Cyber Fraud Task Force. The $25 million is part of over $800 million that the task force has recovered.
The Scam Center Strike Force was started by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro in November of 2025 to stop crypto investment fraud linked to Chinese transnational criminal syndicates.
“This $25 million seizure is a direct result of the Scam Center Strike Force I launched in November 2025, and it demonstrates the power of aggressively targeting these international fraud networks,” Pirro said in a statement.
Five crypto cases with thousands of victims
Two of the largest complaints make up most of the recovered funds. In one of the complaints, a private-sector partner reported suspicious transactions to the Cyber Fraud Task Force. Upon investigation, over 200 people were found to have been defrauded in online romance schemes. The complaint seeks ~ $12.09 million.
In a second complaint, Canadian authorities notified Secret Service agents in late 2024 of a number of wallet addresses. Investigators froze the wallet addresses and traced over 270 suspected victim transactions linked to fake investment platforms. This case seeks roughly $10.4 million.
The other three complaints make up the rest of the $25 million. The people moving the money were found to be in Southeast Asia across the five cases.
Part of a wider and growing campaign
The scams are done through a scheme called “pig butchering”. It involves a scammer who builds trust with a target over a period of time, gets them to purchase real cryptocurrency, then moves the funds into counterfeit trading platforms.
A lot of the operations are run in guarded compounds in Burma, Cambodia, and Laos, where victims who run the scams are often trafficked by workers, the Justice Department has said in earlier announcements.
The most recent filing only continues a trend of enforcement that has soared in 2026. Strike Force had seized a total of $580 million by February, with that number rising to over $700 million by April.
Prosecutors have since charged two Chinese nationals who ran a compound in Burma. This came in the wake of the Treasury Department sanctioning a Cambodian senator, Kok An, in April as well.
The scale of fraud at play is indeed large, with US officials estimating scam operations in Southeast Asia taking up to $10 billion a year from Americans. The FBI also reported that Americans lost ~ $21 billion to cyber-enabled crimes and online scams in 2025.
Prosecutors aim to pursue forfeiture in court and return recovered funds where possible.
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FAQs
How much cryptocurrency did US authorities seize?
Prosecutors filed five civil forfeiture complaints seeking more than $25 million in cryptocurrency, ranging from roughly $285,000 in the smallest case to about $12.09 million in the largest.
What is the Scam Center Strike Force?
It is an initiative U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro launched in November 2025 to target cryptocurrency investment fraud tied to Chinese transnational criminal organizations, and it has now recovered more than $800 million.
Who were the victims in these cases?
The Justice Department said the schemes hit thousands of victims in the United States and Canada, including more than 200 people defrauded through online romance scams and others who lost money to fake crypto investment platforms.
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Hannah Collymore
Hannah is a writer and editor with nearly a decade of blog writing and event reporting experience in the crypto space. At Cryptopolitan, Hannah contributes to the news page, reporting and analyzing the latest developments in DeFi, RWA, crypto regulation, AI and frontier tech industries. She graduated from Arcadia university with a degree in Business Administration.
