Secret Service seizes $400M in crypto, cold wallet among world’s largest

The US Secret Service has been playing the long game, silently stacking crypto like it's going out of style. Over a decade, they've bagged nearly $400M in digital assets, all chilling in one of the globe's biggest cold wallets. Talk about a cold case heating up!

Using blockchain sleuthing and a bit of old-school detective work, they've been tracking down scams left and right. Imagine scammers thinking they're slick, only to get outplayed by VPN slip-ups and domain records. Oops!

From romance scams that catfish victims with pics of 'really good-looking' people (spoiler: it's just some dude in Russia) to sextortion cases, the Secret Service has seen it all. One case even involved a teen in Idaho getting extorted after sending a nude. Yikes.

Crypto scams are now the top dog in US internet crime losses, with a whopping $9.3B stolen in 2024 alone. That's more than half of all internet crime losses for the year. And 2025? Already off to a rocky start with over $2.47B lost to hacks and scams. The audacity!

Recovery often hinges on crypto industry players like Coinbase and Tether stepping in to freeze wallets and analyze transactions. The biggest single recovery? A cool $225M in Tether linked to romance scams. Love might be blind, but blockchain isn't.