U.S. authorities have moved to seize more than $25 million in cryptocurrency tied to investment and romance scams, filing five civil forfeiture complaints that target funds laundered through
U.S. authorities have moved to seize more than $25 million in cryptocurrency tied to investment and romance scams, filing five civil forfeiture complaints that target funds laundered through fraud networks operating largely out of Southeast Asia.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia said on July 21, 2026 that it filed five civil forfeiture complaints seeking to recover fraud-linked digital assets, according to the Justice Department. The action followed separate U.S. Secret Service Washington Field Office investigations into international schemes targeting residents of the United States and Canada. For related coverage, see DOJ Seizes $225.3M in Crypto Fraud Crackdown.
The five individual complaint amounts printed in the release, approximately $10,400,913, $12,086,914, $1,230,900, $2,392,231, and $285,000, add up to $26,395,958. For related coverage, see SBI, Rakuten and Nomura Plan Crypto Investment Trust Launches.
Five DOJ complaints total $26,395,958 Summed from the five civil forfeiture complaint amounts listed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia on July 21, 2026.Investigators identified more than 270 suspected victim transactions in the first investigation, which underpins the complaint seeking roughly $10.4 million. A second investigation involved more than 200 victims defrauded through online romance schemes, tied to a complaint of about $12,086,914.
Romance-scam complaint $12,086,914 Approximate amount sought in the complaint DOJ linked to an online romance-scam investigation affecting more than 200 victims.The filing is a civil forfeiture action rather than a criminal conviction, meaning prosecutors are seeking to recover the assets in U.S. District Court, not yet to convict named defendants.
Both scam types share a common playbook: fraudsters build trust with a target over time before steering them toward transfers, often reframing a personal relationship or a supposed high-yield opportunity as a reason to move money into crypto.
Once funds move on-chain, tracing and recovery grow harder as assets are split across wallets and platforms. In these five cases, the Justice Department said the launderers were predominantly located in Southeast Asia, with IP addresses in China, Malaysia, and Cambodia.
The scale of the underlying problem is large. The FBI's IC3 2025 Annual Report found that cryptocurrency investment fraud was the highest source of financial losses to Americans last year, with $7.2 billion in reported losses.
The action sits inside the DOJ-led Scam Center Strike Force, launched in November 2025 to target Southeast Asian crypto-investment fraud infrastructure. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro tied the recovery directly to that effort.
This $25 million seizure is a direct result of the Scam Center Strike Force I launched in November 2025. — U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro, Scam Center Strike Force
That page reports the Strike Force's crypto seizure team had restrained $832,831,006.15 from these schemes as of June 18, 2026, placing the latest complaints within a much larger recovery campaign. The effort mirrors other high-value cases, including a recent DOJ move to seize $225.3 million in crypto fraud and a parallel Secret Service-led seizure investigation.
A forfeiture filing does not by itself return money to victims; funds must clear the court process before any distribution, and outcomes for the more than 470 combined victims across the two largest complaints remain pending.
The pattern reinforces a point that has featured in earlier cases such as the $1 billion crypto seizure tied to Iran: digital assets moved through fraud networks remain reachable by investigators long after victims lose access to them.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency and digital asset markets carry significant risk. Always do your own research before making decisions.
Bitcoininfonews first published the article titled US Seizes Over $25M in Crypto Linked to Romance and Investment Scams.
