The US Secret Service keeps cryptocurrency worth $ 400 million

The US Secret Service has accumulated cryptocurrency worth about $ 400 million. The virtual assets were seized as a result of a number of investigations in recent years. Most of the crypto assets are stored on one cold wallet, making it one of the largest in the world. This was reported by sources of the Bloomberg media agency.

The formation of the fund was made possible by the Secret Service’s Global Investigations and Operations Center (GIOC), which uses blockchain analysis tools, open source software solutions, and other modern methods to track digital finance. A significant part of the damage from Internet crimes in the United States is related to cryptocurrency fraud. In 2024, Americans lost $ 9.3 billion on cryptocurrency fraud, which is more than half of all losses from cybercrime.

The elderly remain particularly vulnerable to fraud: last year alone, people aged 60 and over lost almost $ 2.8 billion, mostly through fake investment websites. Victims were lured by «lucrative» offers, with modest but regular first payments — after increasing investments, the site disappeared along with the money.

One of the largest seizures in the history of the center is more than $ 225 million in USDT stablecoins from Tether, which were associated with such schemes. The effectiveness of GIOC’s investigative actions has been demonstrated in other cases: in particular, the attackers were identified through a short-term VPN failure, and fraudulent funds were tracked using blockchain data. In the case of blackmailing a teenager from Idaho, the suspect was detained in the UK after his account processed more than 6,000 transactions worth $ 4.1 million.

In many operations to recover stolen cryptocurrency, the agency cooperates with market players. Coinbase and Tether have officially confirmed that they helped the Secret Service identify the attackers, provided information, and blocked suspicious wallets.

In recent months, the US authorities were able to return another $ 8.2 million in February and $ 7 million in March to the victims, which were lost due to fraudulent crypto platforms.