On October 14, 2026, Brooklyn prosecutors and the FBI announced the shutdown of 241 websites and 112 servers tied to a multinational cryptocurrency scam targeting Russian speakers.
The Brooklyn District Attorney's Virtual Currency Unit led the three-year investigation alongside the FBI, resulting in infrastructure seizures without any reported arrests as of October 14, 2026.
The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office estimates total victim losses from the international cryptocurrency scam network to be in the tens of millions of dollars.
The cryptocurrency fraud scheme targeted Russian-speaking Americans, especially in Brooklyn, using Russian-language Facebook ads promoting fraudulent investment opportunities.
Weeks after the initial theft, the same scam network recontacted victims posing as recovery services to solicit additional fees under false promises of retrieving stolen assets.
In early October 2026, law enforcement executed search warrants across three time zones, disrupting 112 cloud servers hosted in the United States and Eastern Europe.
Brooklyn prosecutors have seized approximately $300,000 in stolen cryptocurrency to date while working to claw back additional funds for victims.
Fake investment advisors called victims who responded to ads, guiding them to open platform accounts and transfer cryptocurrency to platform-linked addresses.
When victims sought to withdraw funds, the scam platforms locked accounts or demanded extra payments for nonexistent taxes and fees.
Data retrieved from seized servers revealed that the fraudulent recovery operation specifically exploited victims who had already lost savings to the initial cryptocurrency scam.
The scam network operated using infrastructure and IP addresses in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, hosting victim data, website content, and operational software.
Although the Virtual Currency Unit previously seized 400 fraudulent domains, seizing backend servers was necessary to permanently prevent scammers from re-establishing websites.
