The $938m Scam-Centre Crypto Trail: Can the US Turn Freezes Into Money Returned to Victims?

The US has restrained nearly $1bn in crypto linked to scam-centre networks, but tracing stolen assets is only the first step towards putting money back in victims' hands.

The US Department of Justice's Scam Center Strike Force has restrained approximately $938m in cryptocurrency, including about $52m restrained in a single day. That action was announced on 9 September 2026. The public record does not show that the $938m restrained total has been forfeited or paid out to victims as a single pool.

Authorities say a Telegram marketplace called Xinbi Guarantee connected vendors offering scam services with cryptocurrency wallets used to receive payments. Investigators seized two Xinbi wallets containing about $12m, sought restraint of 47 additional wallets and, with assistance from Tether, restrained more than $52m across Xinbi and its vendor network.

The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which administers American financial sanctions, also designated Xinbi as a significant transnational criminal organisation.

From Wallets to Forfeiture

Restraining a wallet does not automatically create a victim payment. In the US, prosecutors may need to pursue civil forfeiture, resolve claims to the property and establish which funds can legally be returned.

That process was visible in July, when the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia filed five civil forfeiture complaints seeking more than $25m in cryptocurrency from separate fraud investigations.

One investigation traced more than 270 suspected victim transactions to frozen wallet addresses. Another involved more than 200 victims whose funds had been routed through hundreds of intermediary addresses and commingled with money from other victims.

The Scam Center Strike Force was launched in November 2025. US Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said the force would work with 'unwavering focus to return stolen funds to victims'.

But the latest Xinbi announcement describes assets as restrained, while the July cases were still subject to civil forfeiture proceedings. Those stages are not the same as money already paid to victims.

A Small Case Shows the Route Back

On 13 March 2026, the Department of Justice said it would return about $470,735 to two Maine victims after the FBI seized 470,773 USDT, a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency issued by Tether, traced to their payments. More than $800,000 belonging to the victims had originally been transferred to cryptocurrency wallets controlled by criminal actors in 2022.

Prosecutors filed a civil forfeiture complaint, and a federal court ordered the proceeds forfeited to the United States. The government then began providing the funds to the two victims, with Tether assisting with the transfer. The amount ultimately returned was therefore smaller than the victims' original loss.

That example establishes the route from tracing to seizure, forfeiture and return. It does not establish that the same process has been completed across the $938m restrained by the Strike Force.

The Scale of the Recovery Problem

On 3 September 2026, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Treasury bureau that collects and analyses financial intelligence, said it had identified approximately $12.7bn in financial activity tied to suspected digital-asset investment scams across 33,904 Bank Secrecy Act reports filed between 8 September 2023 and 31 December 2025.

Those figures describe reported financial activity linked to suspected scams, rather than confirmed victim losses. They nevertheless illustrate the scale of the tracing and claims problem facing investigators as funds move through multiple wallets, intermediaries and laundering networks.

The $938m measures the enforcement reach of the Strike Force, rather than a published victim-return total. The blockchain can provide the trail; the harder step is turning that trail into forfeited property, resolving claims and completing the final transfer to the people who lost the money.