A 60-year-old woman lost $1 million from her life savings. A Virginia man lost $272,000 and told authorities he was “financially assaulted.” An 82-year-old man died by suicide after falling prey to a similar scam. “There wasn’t enough money left even to pay for his headstone,” his daughter said.
Thousands of people in the United States report every year being defrauded by online actors promising lucrative returns on cryptocurrency investments. The schemes are often long cons that target older Americans with the illusion of romance. But the reality is much grimmer, according to U.S. officials.
A 60-year-old woman lost $1 million from her life savings. A Virginia man lost $272,000 and told authorities he was “financially assaulted.” An 82-year-old man died by suicide after falling prey to a similar scam. “There wasn’t enough money left even to pay for his headstone,” his daughter said.
Thousands of people in the United States report every year being defrauded by online actors promising lucrative returns on cryptocurrency investments. The schemes are often long cons that target older Americans with the illusion of romance. But the reality is much grimmer, according to U.S. officials.
Violent crime networks in Southeast Asia in recent years have begun to coerce people into working at heavily guarded compounds in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, where they assume online personas designed to scam Americans by striking up relationships on social media or via text messages. The scams are intricate, with fake websites and smartphone apps made to look like real investment platforms, and they often run for weeks or months as victims are enticed to invest more after being shown reports of an initial profit.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the top prosecutor in the District of Columbia, said Wednesday that her office had launched the first investigative task force in the country focused on cryptocurrency scams, with the goal of neutralizing the overseas crime organizations draining billions of dollars from unsuspecting Americans. About 150,000 people reported losses of $9.3 billion from the scams in 2024, a 66 percent increase over the previous year, according to an FBI report.
The Scam Center Strike Force already has seized more than $401 million linked to crypto scams, and officials filed legal documents Wednesday to recoup another $80 million for victims, Pirro said. Hundreds of those victims were targeted on dating apps, according to the U.S. Secret Service, which is part of the task force along with officials from the FBI and the State and Treasury departments. The scammers often have ties to organized crime in China or violent militarized groups in Myanmar, officials said.
“The Department of Justice will not stand by while Chinese organized crime victimizes Americans and bleeds dry the hard-earned investments of American citizens,” Pirro said Wednesday at a news conference unveiling the task force.
“The most important thing that we can tell someone who becomes victimized by this is, you know, don’t be disappointed in yourself,” she added. “Don’t be upset with yourself that you fell to this kind of scam, because these people are experts. In some cases, their livelihood depends upon how much money they bring in to the scam center.”
The schemes often involve stealing eye-popping sums from retirees. A woman in Redmond, Washington, lost $9.6 million to one such scam. The fake online personas often use photos of real people. A 63-year-old tai chi, yoga and fitness instructor from California said his photo had been used multiple times over 15 years by scammers posing as romantic interests for women, ABC News reported.
Officials are working with U.S. private companies, such as internet service providers and social media services, to shut down the websites and user accounts associated with crypto scams, Pirro said. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has told officials it will collaborate with the task force, and Microsoft and AARP also “want to work with us,” she said.
Treasury officials said Southeast Asian organized crime networks recruit workers in droves under false pretenses, “using debt bondage, physical violence and the threat of forced prostitution” to get them to scam people in the Western Hemisphere and threaten them with violence when their quotas are unmet.
“We estimate that more than 400,000 people from more than 70 countries are forced to work in these scam compounds, primarily in Burma, Cambodia, and Laos,” Bradley Smith, the director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said at the news conference Wednesday.
Smith singled out the Tai Chang compound in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. The new task force is seeking warrants to seize the satellite terminals it uses to access the internet. The compound is run by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, an armed group that has supported Myanmar’s military junta in that country’s civil conflict while collaborating with Chinese organized crime. The group’s soldiers have been filmed beating handcuffed scam center workers, and rescued victims have reported being subjected to electric shocks and being hung by their arms inside dark rooms, according to Treasury officials.
The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the armed group and several of its senior leaders Wednesday, along with other organizations participating in crypto scams.
Pirro said that President Donald Trump “has sought to make the U.S. a leading haven for cryptocurrency” and that “as part of the president’s goals, we strive to expose these fraudulent contacts and pitfalls so that Americans end up being secure in their investments.”
Trump last month pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the former chief executive of Binance, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering guidelines and completed a four-month prison sentence. Trump’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, announced a deal in May in which one of its coins would be used in a $2 billion transaction between Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, and MGX, the state-backed Emirati investment firm.
Officials said people who believe they may be victims of a cryptocurrency scam should contact [email protected] or visit IC3.gov to file a report.
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