The White House says it froze $833 million. The Justice Department’s ledger says $938.46 million. Trump himself stood onstage and said nearly $1 billion.
Three figures, one pot of money. The difference is only who’s counting, and as of what date.
The money is linked to pig-butchering scams. At compounds in Myanmar and Cambodia, scammers first build a romantic relationship with you, then steer you to a fake investment website. The returns on the page climb every day, while the withdrawal button is always “under maintenance.” On October 21, the White House held a roundtable on combating cybercrime. The heads of four agencies attended, and the announced results were about $833 million intercepted, 503 fake websites seized, and 8,935 Americans in the process of being scammed notified.
Most people would read that and assume the money had been recovered. That’s what I thought the first time I read the press release, too.
It hadn’t.
Not a cent had been returned.
The Justice Department’s definition of “restraining” funds is explicit: the assets are held where they are while legal proceedings move forward. That is neither forfeiture nor a return of funds to any victim. Whether it’s $833 million or $938.46 million, both figures measure the same thing: the scammers can’t move the money for now. As for who it belongs to, that requires forfeiture proceedings, determinations of ownership, and cross-border legal cooperation. Each step can take years. In any case, no list of victims has been made public so far.
On March 6 this year, Trump signed an executive order directing prosecutors to prioritize fraud cases and assess the feasibility of creating a mechanism to recover victims’ funds. Seven months later, feasibility is still being assessed. In September, authorities froze about $52.8 million connected to a Telegram escrow marketplace, spread across 52 wallets. There’s no timeline.
So why can the funds be frozen?
Because most of the money is in stablecoins. Bitcoin has no customer service department; USDT does. Its issuer holds a set of switches that can instantly turn the balance at a particular address into a string of numbers no one can move. The switch works beautifully. Flip it, and the funds can’t move. This entire enforcement effort depends on that switch existing—and on its operator listening to regulators.
I’ve thought about how that switch came to be. It was originally meant to limit losses when something went wrong. Now it’s become the handiest tool available to law enforcement. The tool itself has no allegiance; the hand holding it does. And that same switch can be flipped on the wrong person. You receive some USDT off-platform, with no clear idea where it came from, and the next day your address is flagged. The money is right there on the blockchain, plain as day, but you can’t transfer it. You have to wonder if that’s fair. The ledger is public; everyone can see which address holds the money. You submit an appeal, and all you get back is “your case is being processed”—slower than getting a frozen bank card sorted out.
The 503 websites are just the front end. The front end is the easiest part to dismantle. Websites can be rebuilt, wallets replaced; what’s truly hard to replace is the network of financial channels behind them. In recent years, law enforcement has increasingly focused on sanctions, prosecutions, and cutting off infrastructure. In April, the Treasury Department sanctioned a Cambodian senator and 28 individuals and entities associated with him. On the same day, it brought criminal charges against two people operating scam compounds in Myanmar, and even shut down the messaging app they used to recruit people.
The scale is right there. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received 181,565 crypto-related complaints in 2025, with reported losses totaling $11.3 billion. Investment scams alone accounted for $7.2 billion, and people over 60 lost $4.43 billion. The figure for older victims really stands out. They’re exactly the people most likely to trust those four words: “stable returns.” The public records don’t say how much of that $11.3 billion can be recovered. No one can say for sure.
The step that actually keeps money in people’s pockets happens before the transfer. The 8,935 people who were warned in advance were estimated to have avoided $562 million in losses. That step doesn’t feel like a victory, so it doesn’t make it onto the giant screen at a press conference. But it’s the only step that can get money back without going to court.
Is that group still on your phone? The one whose profile picture is a man in a suit, whose social feed is full of screenshots of trade calls, and who sends out tips like clockwork every day. The website they sent you has a hyphen in the middle of its domain name, and there’s no business registration number at the bottom of the page.
Once the money is transferred out, whether it gets frozen has nothing to do with you. Absolutely nothing.
$COINB $BTC $USDC #比特币 #币安广场 #美股
Three figures, one pot of money. The difference is only who’s counting, and as of what date.
The money is linked to pig-butchering scams. At compounds in Myanmar and Cambodia, scammers first build a romantic relationship with you, then steer you to a fake investment website. The returns on the page climb every day, while the withdrawal button is always “under maintenance.” On October 21, the White House held a roundtable on combating cybercrime. The heads of four agencies attended, and the announced results were about $833 million intercepted, 503 fake websites seized, and 8,935 Americans in the process of being scammed notified.
Most people would read that and assume the money had been recovered. That’s what I thought the first time I read the press release, too.
It hadn’t.
Not a cent had been returned.
The Justice Department’s definition of “restraining” funds is explicit: the assets are held where they are while legal proceedings move forward. That is neither forfeiture nor a return of funds to any victim. Whether it’s $833 million or $938.46 million, both figures measure the same thing: the scammers can’t move the money for now. As for who it belongs to, that requires forfeiture proceedings, determinations of ownership, and cross-border legal cooperation. Each step can take years. In any case, no list of victims has been made public so far.
On March 6 this year, Trump signed an executive order directing prosecutors to prioritize fraud cases and assess the feasibility of creating a mechanism to recover victims’ funds. Seven months later, feasibility is still being assessed. In September, authorities froze about $52.8 million connected to a Telegram escrow marketplace, spread across 52 wallets. There’s no timeline.
So why can the funds be frozen?
Because most of the money is in stablecoins. Bitcoin has no customer service department; USDT does. Its issuer holds a set of switches that can instantly turn the balance at a particular address into a string of numbers no one can move. The switch works beautifully. Flip it, and the funds can’t move. This entire enforcement effort depends on that switch existing—and on its operator listening to regulators.
I’ve thought about how that switch came to be. It was originally meant to limit losses when something went wrong. Now it’s become the handiest tool available to law enforcement. The tool itself has no allegiance; the hand holding it does. And that same switch can be flipped on the wrong person. You receive some USDT off-platform, with no clear idea where it came from, and the next day your address is flagged. The money is right there on the blockchain, plain as day, but you can’t transfer it. You have to wonder if that’s fair. The ledger is public; everyone can see which address holds the money. You submit an appeal, and all you get back is “your case is being processed”—slower than getting a frozen bank card sorted out.
The 503 websites are just the front end. The front end is the easiest part to dismantle. Websites can be rebuilt, wallets replaced; what’s truly hard to replace is the network of financial channels behind them. In recent years, law enforcement has increasingly focused on sanctions, prosecutions, and cutting off infrastructure. In April, the Treasury Department sanctioned a Cambodian senator and 28 individuals and entities associated with him. On the same day, it brought criminal charges against two people operating scam compounds in Myanmar, and even shut down the messaging app they used to recruit people.
The scale is right there. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received 181,565 crypto-related complaints in 2025, with reported losses totaling $11.3 billion. Investment scams alone accounted for $7.2 billion, and people over 60 lost $4.43 billion. The figure for older victims really stands out. They’re exactly the people most likely to trust those four words: “stable returns.” The public records don’t say how much of that $11.3 billion can be recovered. No one can say for sure.
The step that actually keeps money in people’s pockets happens before the transfer. The 8,935 people who were warned in advance were estimated to have avoided $562 million in losses. That step doesn’t feel like a victory, so it doesn’t make it onto the giant screen at a press conference. But it’s the only step that can get money back without going to court.
Is that group still on your phone? The one whose profile picture is a man in a suit, whose social feed is full of screenshots of trade calls, and who sends out tips like clockwork every day. The website they sent you has a hyphen in the middle of its domain name, and there’s no business registration number at the bottom of the page.
Once the money is transferred out, whether it gets frozen has nothing to do with you. Absolutely nothing.
$COINB $BTC $USDC #比特币 #币安广场 #美股