According to Bloomberg’s sources , the US Secret Service's Global Investigations and Operations Center (GIOC) has seized about $400 million worth of digital assets in recent years. Most of the agency's assets are held in a single cold wallet, making it one of the largest cold wallets in the world. The agency accumulated these assets as a result of a series of investigations. GIOC specialists tracked the funds using open source tools, blockchain analysis, and other methods. A significant portion of internet crime losses in the United States is due to digital currency-related fraud. In 2024, Americans lost $9.3 billion—more than half of the total $16.6 billion—to cryptocurrencies. A significant portion of the losses is attributed to the elderly, who lost nearly $2.8 billion, mostly to bogus investment sites. In such schemes, victims are lured by promises of profitable cryptocurrency investments through online communication. The first deposits bring a modest but steady income. When enthusiastic clients increase their investments, often with borrowed funds, the platform closes and their balances disappear. The largest seizure in GIOC history—more than $225 million in Tether (USDT) stablecoins—is linked to this scheme. In one such case, agency investigators identified a domain name registered by the scam organizers after taking advantage of a brief VPN failure. In another case, an unknown person blackmailed an Idaho teenager by threatening to send an intimate photo of him to his relatives. The victim paid $300 twice before contacting the police. GIOC experts reconstructed the extortion using blockchain data, screenshots, and receipts, and employed a dummy payer. As a result, they traced an account, registered to a Nigerian passport, that processed about 6,000 transactions worth nearly $4.1 million. The suspect was apprehended by UK police upon arrival in the United Kingdom. According to Bloomberg, GIOC relies on the help of partners in the crypto industry in operations to recover stolen digital assets. Coinbase and Tether have publicly confirmed their assistance to the agency in several recent cases, which included providing information and freezing wallets.
