US Restrained $938M in Scam-Linked Crypto — Why ‘Restrained’ Isn’t ‘Returned’

$938,460,156.82.

That is the exact amount of cryptocurrency the U.S. Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force says it has restrained from Southeast Asian scam networks. The figure sits on the strike force’s page at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, updated October 15, and it is stated there in a single sentence: “The Strike Force Crypto Seizure team has restrained $938,460,156.82 in crypto currency from these schemes.”

At a White House roundtable on cybercrime on October 21, the administration rounded the number up, describing “nearly $1 billion” in scam-linked crypto as frozen. Both statements are defensible. Neither one means a victim has been repaid.

The distance between those two words — restrained and returned — is the part of this story the headline number hides.

From $700 Million to $938 Million in Six Months

The public record shows the figure moving three times.

In April 2026, the strike force announced it had “restrained more than $700 million” in cryptocurrency alleged to be tied to money laundering from scam victims. The precise figure in that release was $701,962,392.15, identified “as allegedly involved in laundering of funds stolen from victims of cryptocurrency investment fraud.”

In September, a single coordinated action against Xinbi Guarantee — an illicit marketplace that sold scam services — restrained roughly $52 million in one day and, in the words of the U.S. Secret Service, “brought the total restrained by the Scam Center Strike Force to approximately $938 million.” The Xinbi seizure was one Tether publicly assisted, crediting the stablecoin issuer for freezing funds tied to the network.

By October 15, the strike force’s page carried the exact total: $938,460,156.82.

That is a $236.5 million increase over the April figure, or 33.7 percent, in about six months. The accounting is cumulative and self-reported by the government, and the three numbers describe slightly different pools — some funds tied to laundering, some to vendor networks, all rolled into one running total.

What the Number Does Not Say

The most important sentence on the strike force’s page is not the dollar figure. It is this: “The Crypto Seizure team is focused on recovering stolen funds and returning them to victims.”

“Focused on” is the operative phrase. Restraint is a freeze — funds held through voluntary action by crypto providers and through U.S. court process, pending forfeiture. Forfeiture, and then distribution to victims, are separate steps with their own legal timelines. The Justice Department has not published a figure for how much of the $938 million has reached victims, and no primary source sets out a restitution schedule.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro, who launched the strike force in November 2025, framed the work as far from finished. “My Office continues to work to identify funds stolen from victims, having now caused restraint of more than $700 million in cryptocurrency involved in money laundering from U.S. victims of fraud,” she said in the April announcement. “This Administration is lock-step in combatting these scams, and we are not done.”

Charges, a Telegram Channel and 503 Seized Domains

Behind the dollar total sits a concrete operational campaign.

The strike force unsealed charges against two Chinese nationals — Huang Xingshan, also known as “Ah Zhe,” and Jiang Wen Jie, also known as “Jiang Nan” — for wire fraud conspiracy tied to the Shunda compound in Min Let Pan, Burma. According to the Justice Department, the compound held trafficked workers who were beaten and forced to defraud Americans, and a single victim under Jiang’s team lost more than $3 million to a fraudulent investment platform.

“We have charged the Chinese bosses who ran a scam compound in Burma, where trafficked workers were beaten and forced to steal from Americans,” Pirro said. “We have seized a Telegram channel that was luring workers into a forced labor compound in Cambodia where they were ordered to pose as U.S. banks and NYPD to steal American’s life savings.”

The same campaign seized 503 fake investment websites disguised as legitimate platforms, and the Treasury Department sanctioned Cambodian scam center operators. The State Department posted rewards for information on the Tai Chang scam center, whose latest domain — fortuneprimeglobalirts.com — was seized after its predecessor, tickmilleas.com, was taken down.

The Scale of the Problem in the FBI’s Own Numbers

The $938 million restraint sits against a much larger problem.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reports that investment scams became the most commonly reported crime type in 2023, with cryptocurrency investment fraud accounting for 83 percent of that category. Reported losses climbed from $3.96 billion in 2023 to $5.8 billion in 2024, then rose another 24 percent to more than $7.2 billion in 2025.

Those are only the reported losses. The Justice Department’s own release notes the figures “significantly underrepresent actual losses, as most victims do not report to law enforcement,” and cites a U.S. Institute of Peace estimate that scam syndicates worldwide stole close to $64 billion a year as of the end of 2023. These are the same pig-butchering schemes behind a $47 million freeze in 2025, a case that now looks small against the strike force’s running total.

Run the arithmetic and the $938 million restraint equals about 13 percent of one year of reported U.S. losses, and roughly 1.5 percent of the global annual estimate. The largest restraint figure the government has announced is still a small slice of the total it is chasing.

What Has Not Happened Yet

Three things remain open.

Forfeiture comes first. Restrained funds are frozen, not confiscated; a court must order forfeiture before money can move toward victims, and the government has not described that step as complete for the $938 million.

Restitution is second. No primary source states how much has been returned to victims or when distributions begin. The strike force’s stated focus on “returning them to victims” is forward-looking, not a completed act.

The number itself is third. The White House’s “nearly $1 billion” is not wrong — $938 million rounds to nearly $1 billion — but it smooths over the fact that the precise total is still below $1 billion, and that the figure measures money held, not money repaid.

The Next Test Is Forfeiture, Not Another Freeze

The observable next step is not a larger restraint number. It is forfeiture orders and victim distributions — the first time the government states how much of the $938 million actually left its control and reached the people who lost it.

If forfeiture orders begin converting restrained funds into returned funds, that would be the first hard evidence the campaign is closing the loop it describes. If the restraint figure keeps climbing while the return figure stays unpublished, the headline number will keep measuring an intermediate step rather than an outcome.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put the intent plainly: “Treasury will continue to target fraudsters and scam centers that steal billions of dollars from hardworking Americans, no matter where they operate or how well-connected they are.”

The number that matters next is not how much more crypto gets frozen. It is how much of the $938,460,156.82 starts moving in the other direction — back to the victims.