DOJ Files to Seize $25 Million in Crypto From Scammers

Tara McLeese, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Washington field office, said the seizures followed months of work by investigators tracking cyber criminals. "These investigations are far from over," she said in a statement. The office encouraged victims of similar crimes to contact authorities.

Launderers in the cases were predominantly based in Southeast Asia, with IP addresses in China and Malaysia, the DOJ said. The $25 million is part of a wider recovery effort. The Scam Center Strike Force has recovered more than $800 million in total, the release said.

Andrew Balthazor, a lawyer at Holland and Knight who co-leads the firm's crypto asset disputes team, said the industry still lacks the basic protections that make traditional finance trustworthy. Expanding access without stronger guardrails will mostly mean greater harm, he argued in an interview earlier this year. Balthazor said the question is whether those protections exist on crypto rails. Speed is not the issue. He cited an example that did not involve fraud: a user sending a stablecoin to the wrong address and having no way to recover it.