U.S. prosecutors disrupt transnational crypto fraud network with millions in stolen funds.

Huo Xing Finance reports that on October 18, according to Bloomberg, Alona Katz, head of the Virtual Currency Unit at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office in New York, U.S., with assistance from the FBI, dismantled a transnational crypto scam network operating out of Eastern Europe, seizing over 240 fraudulent websites and disrupting 112 servers. The network had defrauded Brooklyn residents of tens of millions of dollars. The operation spanned three time zones, but no arrests were made. The group primarily targeted Russian-speaking users via social media platforms such as Facebook, posing as immigrants who had achieved trading success in the U.S. They lured victims into initially investing hundreds of dollars, then displayed fabricated profits to encourage further fund deposits. Scammers sometimes permitted small withdrawals to create an illusion of legitimacy; when victims requested large withdrawals, they demanded exorbitant fees or vanished entirely. As of early October, authorities were in the process of returning approximately $300,000 to victims in Brooklyn’s Russian-speaking community. According to FBI data cited in the report, reported cryptocurrency fraud losses in the U.S. reached $11.4 billion in 2025—three times the amount reported three years earlier.