Secret Service earns $ 400m in Crypto, building one of the largest purses in the world

The US Secret Service has quietly gained nearly $ 400 million in digital assets over the past decade, combining one of the largest crypto cold wallets in the world, Bloomberg reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with this matter.

The agency’s Global Investigative Operations Center (GIOC) has tracked funds through open-source tools, blockchain reviews, and patience, Jamie Lam, an investigative analyst with the US Secret Service, reportedly reported said Bermuda law enforcement officials last month.

The agency’s crypto trove, most of which is sitting in a single wallet storage, results from a string of scams investigations. Scammers attract targets to seemingly legitimate crypto investment platforms in a typical procedure. Victims often find initial revenues before the sites are lost along with their deposits.

“That’s how they do it,” Lam said. “They’ll send you a picture of a really good man or girl. But maybe some old men in Russia.”

Related: Brazil’s Central Bank Service Provider is that -hack, $ 140m stolen

Blockchain trails unmask crypto scams

Lam’s team uses domain records, Blockchain transactions, and VPN slip-ups to identify scams. In one case, a cryptocurrency payment leads to investigators in another purse. In another, a brief failure at VPN was exposed to an IP address, helping agents together the digital scam route.

At the rudder of the Secret Service’s Crypto strategy was Kali Smith, who directs a team who trained officers in more than 60 countries to unmask online financial crimes.

The agency focuses on jurisdictions with vulnerable administration or programs that sell residence in foreign nationalities. “Sometimes after just a week of training, they can be like, ‘Wow, we don’t realize it’s going on in our country,'” Smith said.

The secret service work is uncovered scams that come from romance investment schemes to sextortion cases. An investigation involved a teenager of Idaho who sent a naked picture to an online stranger. The scammer had been posting $ 300 twice before the teenager went to the police.

Analysts monitor payments through another forced teen acting as a money mule, leading an account tied to nearly $ 4.1 million in transactions under a Nigerian passport. British police arrested the suspected oppressor when he arrived in Guildford, England, where he remained in custody of extradition.

Related: ‘Little Possibility’ $ 8.6B Bitcoin Transfer is a hack

Top losses crypto scams

Crypto -related scams have become the leading driver of crime losses on the US Internet in the US. Americans reported $ 9.3 billion stolen from crypto fraud in 2024, more than half of $ 16.6 billion in total crime losses on the Internet that year, FBI data show.

Meanwhile, the first half of 2025 has Saw more than $ 2.47 billion In losses Due to hacks, scams and exploitationrepresenting nearly 3% increase compared to $ 2.4 billion stolen in 2024.