Trump to spotlight overseas crypto scams at White House cybercrime event

President Donald Trump planned to use a White House event on Oct. 21 to highlight his administration's efforts against foreign criminal networks that lure Americans into fake crypto investments, according to a White House official who spoke with Reuters, as Bitcoin Magazine and CoinDesk reported.

The remarks were part of a broader cybercrime prevention event. Trump and members of his cabinet planned to point to the government's seizure of fraudulent crypto investment websites and its work shutting down online impersonation scams, the official said. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Todd Blanche were expected to attend, Bitcoin Magazine reported.

Enforcement statistics cited by the administration

The administration says its law enforcement agencies have halted about $833 million in crypto connected to overseas scams and seized 503 fraudulent crypto websites under the Homeland Security Task Force. Officials also said they have notified almost 9,000 U.S. citizens that they are being victimized, the White House official told CoinDesk.

The event follows a March executive order directing the Justice Department to prioritize identifying and prosecuting online scammers. A subsequent memo directed the Department of Homeland Security to work with private companies to surveil foreign criminal hacking groups.

FBI data underlying the crackdown shows the scale of the problem. Americans filed more than one million complaints about internet scams in 2025, a 17% increase from 2024. Crypto fraud accounted for more than half the reported damage. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 181,565 crypto-related complaints and $11.366 billion in losses for 2025, making digital assets the single most loss-heavy category in the report. Crypto investment scams alone drained $7.2 billion of that total, Bitcoin Magazine noted, citing the FBI report.

Americans aged 60 and older bore the heaviest burden, with $4.43 billion in crypto-related losses. Crypto ATM scams produced $389 million in losses, a 58% jump from 2024, and recovery scams targeting prior victims generated another $1.4 billion.

Southeast Asian scam compounds

The FBI traced much of the activity to organized criminal enterprises in Cambodia, Laos, and Burma that use victims of human trafficking as forced labor inside scam compounds. Criminals make contact through text messages, social media, dating apps, and digital ads before steering victims to fake platforms that display fabricated profits. When victims try to withdraw, scammers demand taxes and fees and then disappear.

In November, the Treasury Department announced it had formed a multi-agency Scam Center Strike Force targeting so-called pig butchering coordinated by well-funded organized-crime operations. The force combines the DOJ, FBI, Secret Service, State Department, and Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The White House event came as digital assets remained a prominent issue in the congressional midterm campaigns, with self-dealing accusations aimed at the president's family crypto ventures drawing denials from the White House. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said that "all actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people."

Prior enforcement actions

The administration's overseas scam work has included a series of sanctions and strike-force actions over the past year. In June 2025, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned a Philippines-based tech company that helped run pig butchering schemes. In September 2026, the department sanctioned another widespread cyber-scam hub, Xinbi Guarantee.

The Scam Center Strike Force, announced in November 2025, pursues operations coordinated by organized-crime groups in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines. Those groups have built elaborate scam centers that steal money through relationship scams, phishing campaigns, ransomware attacks, and other fraudulent means, according to the White House.

FBI Operation Level Up notified 3,780 victims of active crypto investment fraud in 2025 and saved an estimated $225.8 million, according to the FBI. Chainalysis data from January showed illicit crypto addresses received at least $154 billion in 2025, a 162% increase from 2024. North Korea-linked hackers stole $2 billion over the year, including the $1.5 billion Bybit exploit, the largest crypto heist on record.

The White House had not released a transcript or detailed guest list for the event ahead of its start time. Cabinet members expected to attend spanned homeland security, law enforcement, defense, and justice portfolios, reflecting the multi-agency framing the administration has used for prior cybercrime announcements.