Bloomberg on Saturday, citing people familiar with the case, said on Saturday that the US Secret Service has seized digital assets worth about $ 400 million in digital assets in the last decade.
The Global Investigative Operations Center (GIOC) of the agency has tracked funds through a search analyst, open-source tools, blockchain analysis and patience with a US secret service. told Law Enforcement Officer in Bermuda last month.
The agency’s crypto trove, most of which sits in a single cold-storage wallet, results from a string of investigation into scams. Scammers appears in a specific scheme that legitimate crypto investment attracts the target in platforms. The victims often see the initial profits before disappearing with their deposits.
“This is how they do it,” Lam said. “They will send you a picture of a really good looking man or girl. But it is probably some old man in Russia.”
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Blockchain Trails Anmask Crypto Scam
Lam’s team uses domain records, blockchain transactions and VPN slip-ups to identify fraudsters. In one case, a cryptocurrency payment took the investigators to another wallet. In one and one, a brief VPN failure exposed an IP address, helping agents to connect the digital trail of the scam simultaneously.
At the top of the crypto strategy of the Secret Service is Kali Smith, which directs a team, which has trained authorities in more than 60 countries to reduce online financial crimes.
The agency has focused on courts with weak oversight or programs selling residency to foreign nationals. “Sometimes after just a week of training, they could happen, ‘Wow, we didn’t even know that it is happening in our country,” Smith said.
The work of secret service has highlighted scams ranging from romance-investment schemes to sexual matters. An investigation consisted of an Idaho teenager who sent a naked picture to an online stranger. Scammer expanded $ 300 twice before Kishore’s police left.
Analysts detected the payment through another powerful teenager, acting as a money mule, causing an account of about $ 4.1 million in transactions under the Nigerian passport. When he arrived at Guildford, England, the British police arrested the suspect forcibly recovery, where he lives in custody extradition.
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Crypto scam top disadvantage
Crypto-related scams have become the top drivers of the loss of American Internet crime. Americans reported theft of $ 9.3 billion in crypto fraud in 2024, more than $ 16.6 billion in total internet crime deficit, FBI data shows.
Meanwhile, the first half of the 2025 has seen more than $ 2.47 billion in deficit due to hacks, scams and adventures, which represents a growth of about 3% compared to $ 2.4 billion stolen in 2024.
Recovering the theft crypto often depends on the cooperation of the players of the industry. The coinbase and Tithi have accepted to assist in high-profile matters by analyzing transactions and cold wallets. One of the biggest single recovery included $ 225 million in USDT (USDT), which was associated with romance scams.
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