{"id":6014,"date":"2026-07-22T11:38:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T11:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/?p=6014"},"modified":"2026-07-22T11:38:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T11:38:25","slug":"us-moves-to-seize-25-million-in-cryptocurrency-linked-to-global-romance-and-investment-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/2026\/07\/22\/us-moves-to-seize-25-million-in-cryptocurrency-linked-to-global-romance-and-investment-scams\/","title":{"rendered":"US Moves to Seize $25 Million in Cryptocurrency Linked to Global Romance and Investment Scams"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Department of Justice<\/a> has launched legal action to seize more than $25 million in cryptocurrency tied to a sophisticated network of international investment, romance, and recovery scams that targeted victims across North America.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the District of Columbia, alongside the U.S. Secret Service\u2019s Washington Field Office, filed five civil forfeiture complaints targeting the illicit assets. The action follows extensive investigations by the Cyber Fraud Task Force, which uncovered complex laundering networks processing millions of dollars stolen from thousands of retail investors in the United States and Canada.<\/p>\n

According to court filings, the largest of the five complaints targets approximately $12.1 million tied to romance-themed schemes. This specific operation defrauded more than 200 victims, routing their money through a maze of intermediary digital wallets to commingle the stolen funds and obscure their origin. A second complaint seeks the forfeiture of $10.4 million traced to more than 270 fraudulent transactions.<\/p>\n

Three smaller actions target funds linked to fraudulent investment accounts and secondary “recovery scams”\u2014a predatory practice where fraudsters target previous scam victims by posing as helpers who can retrieve their lost funds for an upfront fee.<\/p>\n

Federal investigators traced the digital footprint of the laundering networks to Southeast Asia, identifying IP addresses located in China, Malaysia, and Cambodia.<\/p>\n

These schemes, often referred to as “pig butchering” (or sha zhu pan<\/i>), typically begin with scammers contacting victims via dating apps, social media, or unsolicited text messages. Over weeks or months, the perpetrators build romantic or personal trust before steering the victims toward fraudulent cryptocurrency trading platforms. Once the victims deposit their funds, the platforms display fabricated gains to encourage larger investments. When victims attempt to withdraw their money, they are locked out, and the funds are rapidly transferred through multiple blockchain addresses.<\/p>\n

The civil forfeiture actions represent a growing push by Western law enforcement to disrupt the financial infrastructure of these syndicates. In February, federal agents successfully seized over $61 million in Tether (USDT) from addresses linked to similar investment fraud schemes. By filing civil forfeiture complaints, the U.S. government can seize assets associated with criminal activity even if the perpetrators themselves remain out of reach of domestic law enforcement, providing a pathway to potentially return some of the recovered funds to the victims.<\/p>\n

This domestic crackdown aligns with broader international efforts to combat transnational cybercrime syndicates, many of which operate out of specialized compounds in Southeast Asia. A massive global campaign coordinated by Interpol<\/a>, known as Operation First Light, recently targeted these very networks. Spanning 97 countries, the operation led to nearly 6,000 arrests and the freezing of $283 million in illicitly acquired assets, highlighting the massive scale of the global threat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Department of Justice has launched legal action to seize more than $25 million in cryptocurrency tied to a sophisticated network of international investment, romance, and recovery scams that targeted victims across North America. The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the District of Columbia, alongside the U.S. Secret Service\u2019s Washington Field Office, filed five civil …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[8673,48,8672,8676,8675,8674,3515,7977,8671],"class_list":["post-6014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crypto","tag-civil-forfeiture","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-cyber-fraud-task-force","tag-interpol","tag-pig-butchering","tag-romance-scams","tag-southeast-asia","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-u-s-secret-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6015,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6014\/revisions\/6015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nile1.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}