The US Department of Justice is going after another pile of allegedly dirty crypto. Prosecutors have filed a civil forfeiture action targeting more than $25 million in tokens connected to international fraud and money laundering networks.
The action lands at a moment when the scale of crypto fraud is genuinely staggering. Victim losses from crypto scams reached more than $7.2 billion in 2025 alone, according to DOJ figures, a number that puts the $25 million target in perspective.
How we got here
The current forfeiture action follows a landmark case from June 2025, when the DOJ filed a civil forfeiture complaint involving more than $225 million in tokens tied to cryptocurrency investment fraud. At the time, the Justice Department described it as the largest seizure of its kind ever executed by the US Secret Service.
The Scam Center Strike Force, a DOJ-affiliated task force specifically focused on fraud operations running out of Southeast Asia, has been a consistent engine behind these seizures. The Strike Force has repeatedly frozen millions in tokens linked to schemes operating from that region, where large-scale fraud compounds have been well documented.
