The Brooklyn District Attorney's office, working with the FBI, took down 241 web domains and 112 servers used in a cryptocurrency investment fraud scheme targeting the Russian-speaking community. The investigation began three years ago after a wave of victims reported responding to Facebook ads in Russian that promised investment opportunities. An "investment adviser" would guide them through opening crypto accounts and transferring funds, but when victims tried to withdraw their money, they were locked out and told to pay additional fees and taxes.
Seized websites were designed to look like legitimate investment platforms, some referencing U.S. government agencies or wealthy figures such as Elon Musk. Investigators traced the operation's IP addresses and infrastructure to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, and search warrants executed in multiple nations allowed authorities to seize servers holding victim information, website data, and operational software. While victims likely lost millions, law enforcement managed to claw back about $300,000 in stolen funds.
The seized data also revealed a secondary scam: criminals contacted victims weeks after the initial fraud, offering to recover their stolen cryptocurrency for a price. District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said the criminals "stole many millions of dollars" and then tried to exploit victims again with false recovery promises. His office has disrupted roughly 400 domains tied to crypto investment fraud over the past two years, but new scam websites keep re-emerging, prompting a shift toward targeting the European backend servers that power them. A Treasury Department report released last month estimated that more than $12.7 billion was stolen from Americans in cryptocurrency investment scams between September 2023 and December 2025.}``````json // Note: The previous response had a stray closing brace and a code fence. Here is the corrected strict JSON output. {