Despite these successes, crypto crime is still on the rise with Americans losing $9.3 billion to crypto scams last year alone.
Over the past decade, the United States Secret Service has quietly become one of the world’s largest holders of seized crypto. The agency conducted patient investigations during this time and secured international collaboration.
At the end of it all, it has successfully confiscated nearly $400 million in digital assets, much of which now sits in a single cold wallet. Behind the headlines, this growing war-chest of crypto shows that the US Secret Service aims at staying one step ahead of digital criminals.
According to a recent Bloomberg report, the Secret Service’s Global Investigative Operations Center (or GIOC) led the charge in identifying and seizing illegal crypto funds.
“Using open-source platforms, transaction analysis, and just being patient, we’ve traced millions in stolen funds,” said Jamie Lam, a senior investigative analyst with the Secret Service during a recent briefing in Bermuda.
The agency’s current crypto haul, which is now at about $400 million, sits in a cold-storage wallet. It makes the Secret Service one of the largest custodians of crypto among law enforcement agencies.
The rise of crypto has also opened new doors for scammers and many of the funds seized by the agency were tied to massive online schemes.
One of the most common examples of this trend involves fake investment platforms. This is a mimic legitimate platforms and show victims small initial returns to build trust. This is right before disappearing with investor funds.
Lam explained to Bloomberg that scammers often use “catfish” tactics, where they send fake images of attractive people to lure in victims. “But it’s probably some old guy in Russia,” he joked grimly.
While crypto transactions are transparent by design, tracing them takes more work, investigators often rely on tools like domain registry searches and blockchain forensics.
Occasional mistakes also happen, where a VPN slips up and reveals a scammer’s real IP address.
An online scammer coerced a teenager in Idaho into sending intimate images. After paying $300 twice, the teen alerted authorities, prompting an investigation.
Investigators discovered that the funds passed through nearly 6,000 crypto transactions. Moreover, they were laundered using another coerced teenager acting as a money mule.
In June, as well, the Secret Service announced its largest-ever crypto seizure with $225 million in USDT linked to romance scams.
Despite these major successes in tracking crypto criminals, this kind of crime seems to be getting worse in terms of frequency.
According to FBI data, Americans lost $9.3 billion to crypto scams in 2024 alone. This figure accounted for more than half of all internet fraud losses for the year.
The first half of this year has already seen over $2.47 billion in losses from hacks, scams, and exploits. This already stands as an increase from the same period last year.
In essence, the upward trend shows that while enforcement is improving, bad actors are becoming more smarter and are improving their tactics. Security firm CertiK reported that in the first six months of this year alone, wallet hacks caused $1.7 billion in losses across just 34 incidents.
Phishing scams netted over $410 million in 132 separate attacks, and the infamous Bybit hack ( of $1.5B). This is as well as the Cetus Protocol exploit ($225M) accounted for most of the damage.
Even without those outliers, total losses would still be around $690 million, which is on par with that of previous years.
Ethereum continues to be the most frequent target, with over $1.6 billion lost in 175 different events. In all, the Secret Service’s $400 million crypto stash shows that enforcement action against crypto crime is as strong as ever.
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