Source: Cointelegraph Original: "{title}"
U.S. authorities are seeking to return $7 million to victims of a social engineering scam that tricked victims into transferring funds to a website disguised as a legitimate cryptocurrency investment platform.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Virginia’s Eastern District stated in a March 21 announcement that the scammers contacted victims and gained their trust before directing them to a fake crypto investment platform website.
Once victims deposited funds, the money was transferred to bank accounts under more than 75 shell companies and sent overseas. Although the funds actually flowed to foreign banks, they were "deceptively" disguised as domestic remittances.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office for Virginia
The Virginia U.S. Attorney’s Office added in the statement, "These websites falsely indicated to victims that their investments were generating substantial returns."
"When victims attempted to withdraw funds, the criminals would force them to pay more money by claiming that the victims needed to pay taxes."
The U.S. Secret Service seized a portion of the stolen funds from a foreign bank in 2023 and initiated this action by filing a civil forfeiture lawsuit in U.S. District Court.
However, the bank also made a claim on these funds, and U.S. authorities ultimately reached a settlement agreement to return the seized $7 million.
Scam victims are urged to contact the Secret Service to apply for the recovery of their losses.
Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis stated in its 2025 "Crypto Crime Report" that cryptocurrency crime has entered a specialized era dominated by efficient cybercrime gangs.
The Australian Federal Police stated on March 21 that they had to warn 130 individuals about a phishing scam targeting crypto users, which forged the same "sender ID" as legitimate exchanges like Binance.
On March 14, another series of similar scam messages reported by X users forged Coinbase and Gemini, attempting to deceive users into setting up a new wallet using pre-generated recovery phrases controlled by the scammers.
Cybersecurity company Malwarebytes issued a warning on March 18 that a new cryptocurrency theft malware was hidden in a "cracked" version of TradingView Premium.
Microsoft's incident response team stated on March 17 that they discovered cybercriminals using a new remote access trojan (RAT) targeting 20 cryptocurrency wallet extensions in the Google Chrome browser.
Related: The Russian Civic Chamber proposes establishing a special fund for managing confiscated crypto assets.
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