In 2024, Americans lost a staggering $9.3 billion to crypto scams. Not surprisingly, older adults were responsible for $2.8 billion of those losses. Crypto fraud has officially overtaken romance scams as the number one source of monetary loss in U.S. internet crime. In response, the U.S. Secret Service has intensified its efforts to combat these crimes, successfully seizing nearly $400 million in digital assets over the past decade and providing crucial training to countries worldwide.
In short, it has taken the Secret Service’s proactive measures to make these recoveries possible. The majority of those seized digital assets, more than $400 million worth, were contained in one heavily protected crypto wallet. In June 2025, one major bust seized $225.3 million related to several types of scams.
One law enforcement action alone returned $225 million in Tether, a popular stablecoin, most of it attributed to romance scams. These persistent seizures have practically rolled back $400 million from circulation, reducing the resources available for illegal activities.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service is already on the frontlines fighting international crypto fraud. They provide pro-bono technical assistance to countries with lax enforcement, or well developed residency-by-investment programs. These training programs, as well as their scalability, are essential for the agency’s crypto strategy lead Kali Smith. Some of the countries have rapidly understood the extent of crypto fraud lurking in their countries a mere week-long training on advanced forensic techniques.
Jamie Lam, a Secret Service investigative analyst, has been instrumental in helping law enforcement understand how crypto scammers work. Her tireless work has equipped law enforcement agencies across the planet to more effectively recognize and thwart these elaborate scams.
These scams are not just false promises. The impacts can be disastrous. In another alarming example, an Idaho teen was convinced to send a nude image and later extorted for $300. The scammer threatened to send the image to the teen’s parents if they didn’t pay up.
In certain cases, crypto scams have even led to murder. In New York, one man suffered extreme torture to disclose his cryptocurrency wallet password. Back in Connecticut, though, somebody actually did abduct the parents of that teenage hacker. These events are just two examples of the extreme dangers linked to digital asset scams.
These few examples underscore the many ways scammers operate and the real financial and emotional devastation that can occur. Meanwhile, the Secret Service has been aggressively confiscating dirty money from crypto scams. They train international partners, making these efforts key in the fight against this crime around the world.
