Field Notes from the Chain
A running feed of real-time developments from across the crypto-fraud landscape: enforcement actions, court rulings, regulatory alerts, and emerging scam typologies, tracked for legal counsel, compliance teams, and victims trying to understand what happened.
Strike Force Seizures of Chinese Scam-Center Crypto Top $580 Million
A joint DOJ, FBI, and Secret Service task force targeting Southeast Asian "pig butchering" compounds has frozen or seized more than $580 million in cryptocurrency tied to Chinese transnational criminal networks, part of an industry estimated to defraud Americans of nearly $10 billion a year.
$5.5M Judgment Over a WhatsApp Pig-Butchering Scheme
A federal court entered a $5.5 million default judgment against six defendants the SEC says ran NanoBit, a fake crypto trading platform pitched through WhatsApp groups. Eighteen investors lost roughly $967,000 before funds were routed to accounts in Hong Kong.
FinCEN Warns Banks on Crypto ATM Scam Payments
FinCEN's August 2025 notice flags a 99% jump in crypto-kiosk scam complaints, with victims losing $246.7 million in a single year. Older adults account for two of every three dollars lost, most often through tech-support and government-impersonation schemes.
How a $20 Deepfake Kit Beats Exchange Verification
Off-the-shelf deepfake tools can now defeat document checks, selfie matches, and liveness detection used by crypto exchanges, letting fraud rings open verified accounts under fabricated identities.
Inside the Anatomy of Crypto Investment Fraud
The FBI breaks down the seven-stage playbook behind "pig butchering" schemes, from first contact on dating apps and WhatsApp groups to fabricated returns, frozen withdrawals, and follow-on recovery scams.
Crypto and AI Scams Cost Americans Nearly $21 Billion
The FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report logged over 1 million complaints for the first time, with crypto-related losses topping $11 billion, the single costliest category, as AI-enabled scams like voice cloning emerge as a fast-growing threat.
Where to report, and what to check first
If you believe you've been targeted by crypto fraud or a related cybercrime, these are the same channels our own investigations rely on. Reporting quickly, and to more than one agency, gives law enforcement the best chance of tracing funds before they move again.
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
File within 24-72 hours of discovering the fraud. Include every wallet address, transaction hash, URL, and handle tied to the scammer.
File at ic3.gov →FTC ReportFraud.ftc.gov
Feeds the FTC's Consumer Sentinel database, shared with federal, state, and local law enforcement nationwide.
Report to the FTC →Chainabuse
Report a scam wallet address to a public, investigator-searchable database run with TRM Labs. Not a recovery service, but valuable for documentation.
Report a wallet →SEC Tips, Complaints & Referrals
For fraud involving investment platforms, fake trading products, or unregistered securities offerings tied to crypto.
File a tip →National Elder Fraud Hotline
833-372-8311. Free case-management help for victims aged 60 and older filing an IC3 complaint.
Call 833-372-8311 →FinCEN Advisories
For banks, exchanges, and VASPs identifying suspicious activity tied to pig-butchering or crypto-kiosk scams.
View FinCEN alerts →Red flags to watch for
Sources on today's typologies
- FinCEN Alert on "Pig Butchering" Virtual Currency Investment Scams: behavioral, financial, and technical red flags for the scam driving the largest reported losses.
- FBI IC3 2025 Internet Crime Report: Cryptocurrency: 181,565 crypto-related complaints and over $11.3 billion in reported losses.
- FinCEN Notice FIN-2025-NTC1 on Crypto ATM/Kiosk Scams: a 99% jump in kiosk-scam complaints, disproportionately affecting older adults.
Deepfakes are now a standard tool in the crypto-crime toolkit
Synthetic voice, video, and identity are no longer proof-of-concept curiosities. In 2026 they are a line item in the modern fraud operation's budget, used to bypass verification, impersonate trusted people, and manufacture legitimacy at scale.
Deepfake AI, in plain terms
AI-generated or altered audio, video, or images that convincingly depict a real person saying or doing something they never did.
From novelty to industrial-scale fraud
US complaints referencing AI totaled 22,364 reports in 2025, and packaged scam kits combining voice cloning, deepfake video, and fake websites are now assembled for a fraction of the cost of a real operation.
Where it meets cryptocurrency crime
Crypto scam operations with visible ties to AI vendors generate substantially more revenue than those without, as impersonation schemes scale with synthetic media.
Detection is losing ground
Human accuracy at spotting high-quality deepfakes drops sharply, and even automated classifiers lose significant accuracy outside lab conditions. That gap is exactly where forensic media authentication work sits.
This is the work behind our Research & Innovation pillar: staying ahead of AI-assisted fraud, synthetic identity, and deepfake media before it becomes the next typology everyone else has to catch up to. See how we investigate it →