Unauthorized activity on BT’s systems in 2021 was the start of the case. Ajay Shinjin, 25, aka AJ Marley Cruz, pocketed more than £44,000 ($58,124) of the stolen funds. Investigators said he spent it on holidays in Dubai, a luxury flat in Canary Wharf and gold-plated teeth grills. Shinjin, of Marsh Wall in Canary Wharf, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and transferring criminal property on September 28. The sentence was passed at Inner London Crown Court.

SIM-swap rings target UK residents

A SIM swap puts the victim’s phone number on a SIM card controlled by a criminal. Once criminals have the number, they glean the one-time passcodes that banks and crypto exchanges send by text to break into accounts. In early November 2021, BT detected unauthorized activity on its systems. Criminals had transferred customer numbers to their SIM cards.

Telecom traced the devices receiving those numbers, eSIM-enabled handsets with two IMEI numbers each. BT’s data pointed police to several suspects, and Shinjin was connected to four of the devices. UK Police discovered four victims of stolen crypto in November 2021. One lost about £40,000 ($52,840) on November 2, and about £27,000 of that went into Shinjin’s personal crypto account.

The second victim’s entire loss of ~£17,000 ($22,457) from November 5 to 7 was later found in Shinjin’s wallet. A third had about £8,000 ($10,568) taken from a Coinbase account on November 3, and police said Shinjin facilitated that theft before the money was passed on. The heaviest hit fell on a fourth victim, who lost some £130,000 ($171,730) in crypto between November 6 and 7. Police said that Shinjin also facilitated that theft.

Shinjin was arrested for the first time at his flat in 2021. After new evidence surfaced, police arrested him again in October 2023 as he landed at Heathrow Airport from Dubai, and he did not comment in interviews. “SIM-swap fraud is a sophisticated and increasingly concerning form of offending, and this case demonstrates the devastating consequences it can have for victims,” said Detective Constable Simon Ardeman of the City of London Police.

Ardeman added that the conviction demonstrates technology-assisted fraud can be investigated and prosecuted. The conviction came more than four years after the thefts were reported. In May, Cryptopolitan reported that ten people in England were charged in connection with a phone scam where callers allegedly posed as police officers and employees of a crypto company to obtain wallet seed phrases, with at least one victim losing £300,000.

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The decision originates from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) v. Larralde et al., Case Number 6:23-cv-1445-WWB-DCI, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida on July 31, 2023. The CFTC announced the decision involving the default judgment on September 30, 2026. Early and Kingrey were required to settle for $15.73 million in restitution and pay civil penalties amounting to $15.75 million.

CFTC highlights inconsistencies in Fundsz’s statement

In a complaint lodged in 2023, the CFTC claimed Fundsz made an assurance that lucrative returns of over 3% every week would be generated using a proprietary algorithm that trades crypto and precious metals. The promoters also claimed that an investment of $2,500 could snowball to an unbelievable figure of $1 million in just four years. According to the regulator, the funds of clients were never traded as stated, and the returns on the investments presented to clients were made up.

The court thereafter discovered that both Early and Kingrey committed serious misrepresentation of facts concerning profit expectations, degree of risk, and previous performance of the investment. Those allegations echo the warning signs issued by the FTC, especially in investment offers that minimize risk while promising unusually high returns. The Fundsz case is important, but is minor in relation to the big picture of investment fraud.

The FBI noted there had been 181,565 cryptocurrency-related reports in 2025 with losses totaling more than $11 billion. Investment fraud accounts for about 49% of total losses incurred due to fraud, while the over-60 age group suffered losses of $7.7 billion, a 37% rise compared to the data from 2024. In 2025, the FTC reported that scams had caused losses of over $7.9 billion, with the median loss per scam exceeding $10,000.

According to the Chainalysis report, at least $14 billion was lost through crypto-based scams and fraud in 2025, which could go over $17 billion once other unidentified illegitimate addresses are factored in. The average amount of each scam increased by 253%, reaching $2,764. Fundsz is not an isolated case. Cryptopolitan reported in August that the SEC and CFTC separately sued Goliath Ventures and founder Christopher Delgado.

The SEC alleged it raised at least $425 million from more than 1,300 investors, while the CFTC cited roughly $397 million from about 1,600 customers. Cross-border enforcement remains more difficult. An October 2025 FSB review found significant gaps and inconsistencies in national crypto frameworks, warning that uneven implementation creates opportunities for regulatory arbitrage and complicates oversight of a global market. The immediate question is how much of the ordered restitution victims ultimately recover. The CFTC has cautioned that repayment orders do not guarantee full recovery when defendants lack sufficient assets.

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Sedric Louis, John Davis, and Martel Williams each face one count of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery, a charge under the Hobbs Act that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. U.S. Attorney David X. Sullivan for the District of Connecticut announced the charges Tuesday. All three pleaded not guilty. The men were brought in by the people coordinating an earlier kidnapping and told to raid a Connecticut home, threaten the person inside, and make him move stolen Bitcoin into wallets that the coordinators controlled, investigators say.

Authorities charge three over attempt to steal Bitcoin

According to prosecutors, the group drove to the state over four days in late August 2024, rented vehicles, picked up air rifles and walkie-talkies, and then spent two days watching the target and his parents. The three left, worried the home’s security cameras had recorded them and unable to contact their co-conspirators. Then a different crew from Florida came out to try and pull off the robbery instead.

As Cryptopolitan reported earlier, a resident of Washington, D.C., was scammed out of 4,100 Bitcoin, worth about $245 million, via a social-engineering scam perpetrated by Veer Chetal and two others who posed as support personnel for Google and a crypto-exchange. Chetal’s family was caught in the crossfire of a fight between Chetal and an alleged associate of Adam Iza at a Miami nightclub in mid-2024. Six men from Florida rammed Sushil and Radhika Chetal’s Lamborghini SUV near Danbury High School on August 25, 2024, blocked it with a van, and dragged the couple out.

Sushil Chetal was beaten with a baseball bat. According to court records, both parents were bound with duct tape, Cryptopolitan reports. Police in Danbury, aided by an off-duty FBI agent who happened to be in the area, chased the van until it crashed and arrested all six. Several people connected with the case have entered guilty pleas. Adam Iza, a 25-year-old businessman from California known as “The Godfather,” pleaded guilty in June to the same Hobbs Act conspiracy and is scheduled to be sentenced on August 12, reported Cryptopolitan.

The six Florida men involved in the kidnapping have also pleaded guilty, and two have already received sentences of 11 years. The three Missouri defendants were charged in a second superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury in New Haven on May 22, 2026. Louis and Davis have been in custody since their arrests on June 25 and entered their pleas on July 30 in federal court in Bridgeport. Williams showed up on July 17 and was released on bond.

According to Cryptopolitan, blockchain security firm CertiK reported 34 verified “wrench attacks” in the first four months of the year, a term used to describe the use of physical force to gain access to Bitcoin, marking a 41% increase from the same period in 2025. Losses totaled about $101 million. CertiK predicts the number of attacks will hit ~130 by the end of the year.

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This was a surge of around 145% year-on-year. Investment scams account for a large share of such financial crimes. It has made it difficult for exchanges, regulators, and crypto firms to regain public trust. One of the fresh cases mentioned that a woman in her fifties who worked in insurance was introduced to a lady who allegedly wanted to discuss insurance matters with her. However, she was later introduced to a man claiming to be in the automobile business, helping someone with insurance inquiries. Their WhatsApp conversations gradually became romantic.

Scammers are targeting elderly Hong Kong residents

According to the report, the man claimed to be an experienced investor and convinced her to use a crypto trading application. He then introduced her to a fake platform manager to manage her wallet. After half a year, she gave over 4 million HKD (approx worth $510k) in cash and transferred almost 22 million HKD (approx worth $2.8 million) to the accounts given by the scammers. Her account seemed to yield profits of over 800%. When she tried to withdraw her money, her request was denied, leaving her with a loss of more than 26 million HKD (approx worth $3.32 million).

The pattern is a well-known one in the scamming world. Back in May 2026, the South China Morning Post reported another case of a woman from Hong Kong losing over HKD 1 million after being lured by a manipulated advertisement on Facebook that referred her to an AI-based investment site made popular on WhatsApp. In one week alone, authorities received over 70 investment scam complaints, claiming losses of over HKD 50 million. Scams evolve from romantic entanglements to AI-promoted investments.

However, the basic principles of the scam have changed very little. It begins by earning the trust of would-be marks and showing phony gains before forbidding them to take their money out. The crime data in Hong Kong shows why investment fraud has become a priority. Deception accounted for 48.5% of all reported crime in 2025. Although total scam cases fell 2.9% to 43,212, online investment fraud rose 30.7% to 5,135 cases, while losses jumped 58.4% to HK$3.58 billion, according to the Anti-Deception Coordination Centre (ADCC).

Investment scams represented only 11.9% of deception cases but generated 44.1% of all financial losses. Average losses also increased from roughly HK$580,000 to HK$700,000 per case. In October 2025, the Hong Kong police formed a Virtual Asset Intelligence Taskforce in order to enhance collaboration with Customs and financial authorities and improve methods of prevention of money laundering involving cryptocurrencies. The ADCC had also directed more focus on the campaigns linked to awareness-raising in investment fraud in 2026.

Data suggests that authorities are more concerned with the economic consequences of cases than with their sheer numbers. In spite of the fact that shopping and employment scams exist more than cryptocurrency investment scams, the damage resulting from these scams has shown that, in fact, the latter is worse. Additionally, the probability of reclaiming the lost funds drops drastically once the funds have been turned into cryptocurrency and moved between wallets or foreign exchanges, emphasizing the need for prevention, rapid reporting, and cross-border cooperation.

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According to the FBI, the malware was an infostealer. During gameplay, it silently collects stored passwords, current session tokens, and information from crypto wallets. The infections were distributed among eight titles from May 2024 to February 2026. The games are BlockBlasters, Dashverse, Lunara, PirateFi, Chemia, Lampy, DashFPS, and Tokenova. Steam pulled all eight games in early 2026. Some titles came out clean and passed platform checks. The malicious payload came later, in a post-launch update, a sequence that bypasses the first review altogether. Bitdefender called the titles “indie games distributed through Steam” that “harbored malware inside.”

FBI says the suspect used the malware to steal crypto credentials

The FBI mentioned that the operation did not wait for victims to wander in. According to the complaint, bots flagged wallets with large balances. They then sent the targets direct messages on Discord, Telegram, X and LinkedIn, directing them to the infected downloads. BlockBlasters alone netted more than $150,000 from 261 to 478 victims, according to forensic researcher ZachXBT and the malware repository vx-underground.

In September 2025, Twitch streamer RastalandTV lost ~$32,000; most of the funds were donated by viewers to cancer treatment. FBI investigators say Wilkins didn’t build the tool by himself. According to the complaint, he paid $10,000 for a remote access Trojan under the darkweb handle “Sibel.eth.” He worked with a lead developer who has not been charged and remains unnamed. It was the spending that gave away the scheme. The conspirators converted stolen crypto to more than 150 Bitrefill gift cards.

Most of them were for Uber Eats orders. That food delivery account led to Wilkins, whose wallets showed ~$382,000 in crypto flowing through them, the complaint said. Wilkins is charged with conspiracy to obtain information by computer for private financial gain. That carries a jail sentence of up to 10 years. His court date was on July 15th.

As Cryptopolitan reported this month, 34-year-old Armenian national Karen Serobovich Vardanyan pleaded guilty this month to conspiracy and computer fraud for his part in a Ryuk ransomware campaign on July 8. That campaign extracted more than $15 million in bitcoin from U.S. companies. Cryptopolitan also reported on a separate situation in which a fake Polymarket trading bot delivered credential-stealing malware to 50+ developers.

Security researchers have one piece of direct advice for anyone who installed the named titles. If you keep crypto on the same computer you game on, consider a hardware wallet. Assuming the computer is compromised, run a full antimalware scan from a clean device and reset every password and session token. In PirateFi in particular, researchers suggest a full OS reinstall, according to PCMag.

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The scam starts when a caller, who claims to be a police detective, calls a resident of New Zealand and says that the victim’s identity documents or personal information were found on someone who was recently arrested. The fake officer determines whether the person owns cryptocurrency and how much, and then a second scammer appears, posing as a representative from the victim’s crypto company. The representative persuades the victim to provide passwords or seed phrases, sometimes directing them to a fake website that appears to be a legitimate crypto app. “This type of scam is on the rise, and we want the community to be alert,” Mills said.

New Zealand populace conned by scammers posing as detectives

According to Mills, real police officers do talk to people during investigations. But they will never call and ask for information about crypto wallets, bank cards, PINs, passwords, or seed phrases. He also said that a phone number or email address on the screen doesn’t mean anything because scammers can fake real police contact information. Anyone concerned that a caller is not genuine should ask for the officer’s details, then hang up and call the police.

The New Zealand National Cyber Security Centre told people to watch out for urgent calls asking for software, money or access to their accounts or devices. Similar warnings have been observed across the Tasman. Between July 3 and 7, residents fell victim to a different phishing attack, with more than $1.47 million in losses reported to Queensland’s Financial and Cyber Crime Group.

Victims of the scheme were mailed a physical letter containing their personal information and a QR code that led to a website claiming to host a security update. A 70-year-old chartered accountant from Gwalior, India, lost ~$2.2 million after being friended on social media and taken to a fake trading platform, Cryptopolitan reported. The platform had shown fake early gains, then scammers refused to return his money. US cryptocurrency losses hit $11.4 billion in 2025, an increase of 22% from the prior year, according to data from the FBI.

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According to officials, the victim unknowingly entered a work-from-home scheme built around fake product reviews. He was told to deposit cryptocurrency to match the value of the items he was supposedly reviewing, with a promise of commissions and a full refund plus profit once the products were sold. The bad actors behind the scam kept on increasing the amount to be deposited as the products got bigger. When they had drained everything they could from the victim, they cut contact and told him the balance was “stuck in the blockchain” unless he paid one more fee.

Florida reimburses stolen funds to scam victim

Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office investigators were able to trace the stolen deposits to a larger consolidation wallet, which was used to hold funds pooled from several different frauds. Prosecutors then pursued civil forfeiture. The scammers declined to contest the case; therefore, the court entered a default judgment, which saw the recovered amount paid back to the victim. “Instead of setting records, we prefer to prevent fraud but are proud to deliver justice and make this victim whole,” Uthmeier stated.

He credited the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and Chief Assistant Statewide Prosecutor John Paul and said the funds were pulled back from what he described as transnational criminals. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters stated, “Recovering more than $700,000 and returning it to the victim is an outstanding result,” Waters said in the release, thanking Uthmeier’s team for its work holding fraudsters to account. The reason a single $710,000 refund makes headlines is that most crypto-fraud money is never recovered.

Many crypto investigations end with a conviction, while the victims are left empty-handed or with far less than the value of what was stolen from them. An example is the OneCoin case, where the Department of Justice only recently opened a compensation process using more than $40 million in forfeited assets, years after the scheme defrauded an estimated 3.5 million people out of over $4 billion. In Arizona, the state attorney general’s office stated that residents lost more than $177 million to crypto-ATM fraud schemes in 2024 alone.

The development led the state to pass a law giving Bitcoin-ATM victims a narrow 30-day window to request a refund. Despite this, victims say that they are only getting part of their money back after a slow process. Given the above cases, the Jacksonville case then becomes a ray of hope. Uthmeier used the case to repeat warnings about work-from-home fraud, which he said tends to target the most vulnerable.

The attorney general’s office listed upfront charges for background checks or equipment, requests to buy gift cards or crypto as part of a job, unsolicited job offers by text, and interviews conducted only over text as red flags that people should be looking out for. The office advised anyone considering an online job to contact the company directly to confirm it is real before sending any money.

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Patel pointed out that crypto fraudsters have been scamming and exploiting the American people for too long. He also attached a video showing the magnitude of the problem crypto scammers are causing unsuspecting victims. Over the past few months, the FBI has ramped up its public stance on digital asset crime. Last year alone, Americans lost over $20 billion to cybercrime, with over half of that amount due to crypto-related fraud. Digital asset crime in the U.S accounted for $11 billion according to data from the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

FBI Director issues warning as crypto fraud continues to jump

Investment fraud, the broader bucket that includes most pig-butchering and fake-platform schemes, was the single costliest category at $10.7 billion. Elderly Americans were the most affected demographic, constituting over one-third of the total recorded losses. According to the reports, California, Florida, and Texas topped the list of states most affected by crypto-specific scams. FBI director Kash Patel said he prefers following the money trail over chasing individuals.

He credited the Trump administration’s new relationships with foreign governments, which have allowed the agency to conduct investigations in areas previously beyond its reach. He cited recent wins as proof that the approach works, including an operation earlier this year that led to roughly 300 arrests in Dubai tied to an estimated $4 billion in fraud. The bureau also froze more than 3,000 illicit crypto wallets to date and recovered more than $500 million. Patel’s latest statement shows plans to intensify the asset recovery process further.

Earlier, the UK’s National Crime Agency closed out Operation Atlantic, in collaboration with the US Secret Service, the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Ontario Securities Commission, which targeted “approval phishing.” A phishing scam in which victims are tricked into signing a transaction that grants the criminal direct control of their wallet. During the operation, more than 20,000 victims were identified across 30-plus countries, and $12 million was frozen.

Another $33 million in suspected fraud was flagged for further investigation, and over 120 scam-linked web domains were taken down. NCA Deputy Director of Investigations Miles Bonfield called it proof of what’s possible “when international agencies and private industry work side by side. U.S. Secret Service Assistant Director Brent Daniels applauded the operation, saying it denied criminals the ability to prey on unsuspecting victims.

The Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimates that crypto-based money laundering reached $82 billion globally in 2025, an eightfold increase since 2020. Chinese-language money laundering networks are reportedly now processing roughly a fifth of all illicit crypto flows over the past five years, according to Chris Skinner. A separate estimate from TRM Labs puts total illicit crypto activity even higher, at $158 billion for the year, a 145% jump from 2024.

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This group aims to give a method of reporting losses for victims who are currently without a clear path to do so. According to official government data, United States residents lost more than $11 billion to cryptocurrency fraud in 2025 alone. The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report shows that there were 181,565 complaints involving cryptocurrency, with total losses exceeding $11.3 billion. This represents a 21% jump in complaint volume from the previous year. Investment scams were the biggest contributor to the total amount, accounting for $7.2 billion of those losses.

A report from blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs found that wallets linked to illegal activity received $158 billion in cryptocurrency during 2025, a sharp increase from $64.5 billion in 2024. These losses were driven largely by sanctions evasion and nation-state actors. However, it is worth noting that illegal activity as a share of all crypto activity actually fell slightly to 1.2% in 2025. The FBI reports that, more than any age group, people over 60 filed 44,555 complaints and lost $4.43 billion to crypto scams.

United States legislators submit a new bill to go after fraudsters

In the United States, the bureau’s 2025 Internet Crime Report logged 181,565 complaints involving cryptocurrency, with total losses exceeding $11 billion, representing a 21% jump in complaint volume from the prior year. The FBI has launched initiatives like Operation Level Up to identify and notify victims while a scam is still happening, and that has helped save an estimated over $500 million since it began in 2024. In 2025 alone, the operation saved $225.8 million. There were also 3780 recorded victims that year.

The bill, called the Federal Cryptocurrency Theft Enforcement and Coordination Act, was introduced by Republican Rep. Lance Gooden and Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer as a means to give victims, who currently have no single place to turn for help, a place to make reports. Rep. Lance Gooden is a Texas Republican who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, while Rep. Josh Gottheimer is a New Jersey Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.

Rep. Gooden said in a statement that Americans lack a coordinated strategy to stop the crypto criminals who are stealing millions from them. The task force would be based in the Department of Justice and would bring together the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Treasury Department. Its job is to coordinate investigations, create a standard playbook for local police on handling crypto theft, and provide better support for victims. The Trump administration disbanded the Department of Justice’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) in 2025.

Officials at the time argued that the previous administration had used the team to regulate crypto through lawsuits rather than focusing on catching criminals, and now the new bill will fill that gap, albeit with a different approach. Federal enforcement of crypto-related crime is currently split across multiple agencies and has overlapping but fragmented rules that have produced inconsistent responses, leaving investigators and victims to navigate the inconsistent framework.

The Digital Chamber, a crypto policy organization, endorsed the idea, saying law enforcement needs better tools and training. Dennis Porter of the Satoshi Action Fund said the bill would give “victims, investigators, and local law enforcement the unified federal response they have been missing.” The bill still needs to pass through committees or be attached to a larger legislative package to become law.

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According to the proposal, the bill also imposes life sentences on those who operate centers for online and digital currency scams, also known as scam compounds. This bill was tabled on 14 May 2026, and Myanmar’s military-controlled parliament is expected to meet during the first week of June. According to reports, the proposed bill follows an increasing trend of cooperation between Myanmar and China in cracking down on scam rings that operate across their borders.

Myanmar proposes strict penalties for crypto criminals

In February 2026, the Supreme People’s Court of China reported that two major scam rings from Myanmar – the Ming and Bai families, considered among the four major families based in northern Myanmar – had been dismantled. Chinese courts handed down life sentences or even heavier punishments for 39 people, with 16 sentenced to death. Eleven members of the Ming family were hanged to death on 29 January 2026 after their conviction in September 2025 in Wenzhou.

By the end of last year, Chinese courts had handled more than 27,000 cases related to telecommunications fraud in northern Myanmar, with over 41,000 repatriated perpetrators convicted. In addition, Myanmar had arrested and turned over suspected scam workers and their victims to the Chinese government, with the transfer process occurring at the Mae Sot airport in Thailand in February 2025.

The draft law is part of Myanmar’s attempt to tackle domestic instability and foreign criticism of the country’s role as a base for scammers across Southeast Asia. As it stands, the Anti-Online Scam Bill will place the strictest punishments ever seen in the region. Before 2021, Myanmar also had lax regulations for gambling and online gambling in areas bordering Thailand and China.

Developments such as the Shwe Kokko Yatai New City, established in 2017 as a mixed-use commercial area, were located on the Thai-Myanmar border. Areas that were once known for gambling soon changed to cyber fraud due to border closures during the pandemic. Strongholds were created or enlarged in Shwe Kokko, KK Park close to Myawaddy, Laukkai in Kokang, and Mong La. Such fortified areas served as business centers with thick walls, armed security, and Starlink satellite internet connectivity.

According to the UN report, at least 120,000 individuals had been subjected to online fraud in Myanmar. The Chinese syndicates, referred to by some as “the four major families,” controlled many of these compounds, with the Laukkai syndicate alone earning more than $1.5 billion until its disbandment. The trafficked laborers, tricked using false job postings, are transported through China, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

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