US prosecutors crack down on transnational crypto fraud network, with alleged fraud amounting to tens of millions of dollars.

October 18 - According to Bloomberg, Alona Katz, head of the virtual currency unit at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, with FBI assistance, launched a crackdown on a transnational crypto fraud network operating from Eastern Europe, seizing and disrupting over 240 scam websites and 112 servers under its control. The network had defrauded Brooklyn residents of tens of millions of dollars. The operation spanned three time zones, but no arrests were made.

The group primarily approached Russian-speaking users through social platforms like Facebook, posing as immigrants who had achieved success in the U.S. through trading, luring victims to initially invest hundreds of dollars, then showing fake profits to encourage continued deposits. Scammers sometimes allowed small withdrawals to create a false sense of credibility; when victims requested large withdrawals, they would demand high fees or simply disappear.

As of early October, the team was working on returning approximately $300,000 to victims of scams targeting the Russian-speaking community in Brooklyn. The report cited FBI data stating that reported cryptocurrency fraud losses in the U.S. reached $11.4 billion in 2025, about three times the amount from three years ago.