White House puts its crypto-scam crackdown on show: about $833 million halted and 503 fake sites seized, as FBI complaints top 1 million

The White House is putting its fight against overseas crypto scams on display. President Donald Trump planned to highlight the government's work against foreign criminal networks that lure Americans into fake crypto investments at a cybercrime event on Wednesday, a White House official told Reuters.

According to the White House, US law enforcement has halted about $833 million in crypto connected to overseas scams, and 503 fraudulent crypto websites have been seized under the watch of the Homeland Security Task Force, CoinDesk reported. Almost 9,000 Americans have been told they were being victimized.

The numbers behind the push are large. The FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report counted 1,008,597 complaints, up from 859,532 in 2024, and crypto-related losses of more than $11 billion, per crypto.news. A March executive order told the Justice Department to prioritise prosecuting online scammers, Reuters reported. The Treasury Department set up a multi-agency Scam Center Strike Force in November 2025 to target "pig butchering" schemes run from countries including Burma, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines, CoinDesk reported.

The event comes with the midterm elections a couple of weeks away, CoinDesk noted. A Reuters investigation found Trump and his sons added at least $2.3 billion to the family fortune through their main crypto ventures. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly, in a statement to Reuters about its investigation, said all actions by the president and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.

What comes next: the March executive order also directed the attorney general to recommend a victim restoration program using recovered assets, per crypto.news.