Trump to Tout Administration's Fight Against Foreign Crypto Scams

A White House event on Wednesday will see President Donald Trump draw attention to his administration's efforts against overseas criminal groups that trick US citizens into bogus cryptocurrency schemes, according to a White House official who spoke to Reuters.

The speech forms part of a larger gathering centered on cyber crime prevention. The official reportedly stated that Trump and his cabinet intend to highlight the government's confiscation of fake crypto investment sites and its efforts to eliminate online identity fraud operations.

Among the anticipated attendees are Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The event comes after a March executive order from Trump that instructed the Justice Department to make finding and prosecuting online fraudsters a top priority. A subsequent memo directed the Department of Homeland Security to partner with private firms to monitor foreign criminal hacking collectives.

Online and crypto scams drove record losses in 2025

The statistics driving the effort are stark. In 2025, over one million internet scam complaints were filed by Americans with the FBI, marking a 17% rise from the year prior and bringing a new record for total losses.

Cryptocurrency fraud made up over half of that figure. For 2025, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 181,565 complaints tied to crypto and $11.366 billion in losses, placing digital assets as the report's costliest category. Within that, $7.2 billion was lost specifically to crypto investment scams.

The FBI attributes a large share of this activity to organized crime networks in Southeast Asia, specifically in Cambodia, Laos, and Burma. These groups force human trafficking victims to work in scam compounds. Contact is made via texts, social media, dating apps, and online ads, redirecting victims to fraudulent platforms that show invented returns. Attempts by victims to cash out are met by demands for taxes and fees, after which the scammers disappear.

The heaviest losses were sustained by Americans aged 60 and up, who lost $4.43 billion in cryptocurrency scams. Crypto ATM scams accounted for $389 million in losses, a 58% climb compared to 2024, while recovery scams aimed at those already defrauded generated a further $1.4 billion.

The situation globally is even more severe. According to Chainalysis data from January, addresses linked to illicit crypto activity took in at least $154 billion throughout 2025, a jump of 162% from 2024. North Korea-connected hackers stole $2 billion during the year, which includes the $1.5 billion Bybit incident, the biggest crypto theft ever recorded.

Law enforcement has notched concrete wins. In 2025, the FBI's Operation Level Up alerted 3,780 individuals to ongoing crypto investment fraud and prevented roughly $225.8 million in losses. A Scam Center Strike Force, integrating the DOJ, FBI, Secret Service, State Department, and Treasury's OFAC, is focused on the Southeast Asian compounds.

Reuters reports that Trump and his sons have grown their family's wealth by at least $2.3 billion through their primary crypto projects, even as the investors they brought in suffered a $2.3 billion loss.

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance who was convicted after the exchange admitted to not keeping a proper anti-money laundering program in place, received a pardon from Trump in October 2025.

Congressional Democrats have alleged that the Trump family is leveraging the presidency for personal financial gain via its crypto activities. The White House dismisses this accusation.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly stated that “all actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”