The U.S. Department of Justice has moved to forfeit more than $25 million in cryptocurrency recovered from five international fraud investigations targeting victims in the United States and Canada through fake crypto investment schemes and romance scams. The civil forfeiture complaints, filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, mark the latest enforcement action by the DOJ's Scam Center Strike Force, which has already recovered over $800 million in victim assets since its launch in November 2025.
According to court documents, the five cases share common laundering patterns that routed stolen cryptocurrency through networks based primarily in Southeast Asia, with IP addresses traced to China, Malaysia, and Cambodia. The largest individual case began after Canadian authorities tipped U.S. investigators in late 2024 about suspicious cross-border activity. That probe identified more than 270 victim transactions and seeks forfeiture of approximately $10.4 million. Another operation, focused on online romance scams, affected over 200 victims and accounts for the biggest share of the recovery, with authorities targeting roughly $12.1 million. Separate complaints cover $1.2 million (reported May 2026), $2.4 million (March 2026), and nearly $285,000 from a fee-based recovery scam in which victims were asked to pay additional charges to retrieve previously stolen cryptocurrency.
The forfeiture action underscores how federal agencies are increasingly using blockchain analytics to trace illicit digital assets. Once the court resolves ownership claims, eligible victims may be compensated. The cases also continue a series of similar DOJ moves, including a March 2026 seizure of 327,829.72 USDT from a Massachusetts romance scam and a July 2025 forfeiture of nearly $2.3 million in Bitcoin linked to the Chaos ransomware group.
