Over the last ten years, the U.S. Secret Service has built one of the largest cryptocurrency cold wallets, collecting close to $400 million in seized digital assets.
The Secret Service’s Global Investigative Operations Center (GIOC) has played a key role in tracking these funds. Jamie Lam, one of the agency’s investigative analysts, explained during a recent briefing in Bermuda that the team relies on blockchain tracking tools, public data, and a lot of persistence to follow the money.
Most of the crypto in the agency’s possession was taken as part of investigations into online scams. A common fraud scheme involves convincing people to invest in what looks like a legitimate cryptocurrency platform. Victims are often shown initial returns, but the platforms eventually disappear, taking all the funds with them.
Lam and her team use a mix of clues, including domain names, transaction data, and technical mistakes like VPN glitches, to track down those behind the schemes.
Leading the agency’s crypto investigations is Kali Smith, who heads a team that’s trained officials in more than 60 countries. Their mission is to help governments spot and stop digital financial crimes, especially in places where regulations are weak or citizenship programs are easily exploited. “Sometimes, all it takes is a week of training for local officials to realize these scams are happening right under their noses,” Smith noted.
The agency’s cases have ranged from love-based investment cons to blackmail involving explicit images. In one case, a teen from Idaho sent a nude image to a stranger online and was then blackmailed for money. The scammer got $600 before the teen reported it.
Investigators eventually traced the money through another teen who had been coerced into being a money mule. This led them to an account holding over $4 million, tied to a Nigerian passport. The suspect was arrested in the UK and is currently awaiting extradition.
Crypto scams are currently the leading cause of online financial losses in the U.S. In 2024, Americans lost $9.3 billion to crypto-related fraud, making up more than half of the nearly $17 billion in total internet crime losses that year, according to the FBI.
So far in 2025, over $2.47 billion has already been stolen in crypto hacks and scams—a slight increase from the $2.4 billion reported during the same period last year.
Getting stolen funds back often depends on help from cryptocurrency companies. Firms like Tether and Coinbase have cooperated with investigations by tracking transactions and freezing accounts. One significant recovery effort brought back $225 million in USDT connected to romance scam networks.
Crypto companies, such as HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: HIVE) (TSX.V: HIVE), are growing increasingly concerned about the evolving cybercrime landscape and are actively adapting their cybersecurity measures to counter these threats.
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