U.S. President Donald Trump is set to use a White House cybercrime prevention event on Wednesday to spotlight what his administration says it has been doing to fight overseas crypto scams.
Reuters, citing a White House official, reported that foreign criminal networks have been pulling Americans into bogus crypto investment schemes. Trump and cabinet officials are expected to say the government has seized multiple fraudulent crypto investment websites and has begun shutting down online impersonation scams.
Expected attendees include Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The event follows an executive order from March this year, when Trump told the Justice Department to make identifying and prosecuting cyber fraudsters a priority. He later signed a memorandum requiring the Department of Homeland Security to work with private-sector companies to monitor foreign criminal hacking groups.
FBI figures show Americans filed more than 1 million cyber fraud complaints in 2025, a 17% increase from 2024, while losses hit a record high. Crypto scams made up more than half of those losses. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 181,565 crypto-related complaints and $11.366 billion in losses, with crypto investment fraud accounting for $7.2 billion.
Most of the scam activity was linked to organized crime groups in Southeast Asia — Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar among them. And the criminals used trafficking victims as forced labor inside scam compounds.
Americans 60 and older took the biggest hit, with crypto-related losses reaching $4.43 billion. Crypto ATM scams led to $389 million in losses, up 58% from 2024. And follow-on scams aimed at earlier victims caused another $1.4 billion in losses.
The FBI’s Operation Level Up alerted 3,780 victims who were actively being targeted by crypto investment scams in 2025. The agency said that saved an estimated $225.8 million.