Crypto Scam Losses: Why Frozen Funds Aren't Refunds for Victims

Federal law enforcement has also frozen nearly $1 billion of cyber currency and tied to foreign scammers.

Nearly a billion dollars frozen and did you catch the word he used for it? Cyber currency. Now, that was President Trump at the White House on the 21st of October 2026 at a round table on cybercrime and fraud with the Attorney General, the head of the FBI, and several cabinet members around the table. So, Trump says nearly a billion dollars was frozen from scammers. And here's a funny detail.

He never actually said the word crypto. CoinTelegraph spotted that within hours, but crypto is what a lot of his money moves in and that matters for the coins we hold because the officials in that room put some big numbers on the table. According to the FBI's own report in 2025, people over 60 lost $7.7 billion to online crime in that year. Those are our parents, our grandparents, and for plenty of people watching, it's us, right? So, if you own XRP, here are the two things I want you to leave with.

First, frozen isn't refunded. Frozen money isn't the same as getting it back. And second, most of the money goes missing after one kind of phone call and I'll show you the call to watch for. To be honest, there's one habit that beats that and I'm going to show you that, too. And I've also left something for you in the description like I do in every video.

It's the very first link. I'll explain it once we've seen how these gangs work and it's aimed at people who hold crypto but have never sat down and planned for a bad day. And I think that's a lot of us, right? We spend whole evenings choosing a coin and barely 10 minutes thinking about how we'd protect it. We'd assume we'd spot a scammer a mile off and then the call comes at that moment from a voice that sounds official.

And there's no bank fraud team at the other end of our crypto to stop the payment. So, here's where we're going, who those gangs are going after, what the government says it's done about them, what a freeze actually is, and the call that empty savings, and what it all means if the coins are XRP. Now, Trump opened up the round table by describing what these gangs do to ordinary families. Check this out.

Countless American victims have had their life savings, bank accounts, college funds, and more emptied by these thieves. And that's exactly what they are and they're often part of a sophisticated criminal syndicate operating scam centers all around the world.

Scam centers are exactly what they sound like, guys. Big compounds mostly in the Southeast Asia with hundreds of people working the phones and the apps all day. Many of them trafficked and forced to do it. They run like call centers with scripts and targets and managers and it isn't always one frantic phone call. One of the most common routes is slow.

Someone starts chatting to you online maybe after a wrong number text and over weeks they become a friend and then they show you an investment app that seems to be making them a fortune and they help you put a little in. Now, the app shows lovely gains so you put more in and the day you try to take it out there's a fee. Then a tax and then the app and the friend are gone. Now, investment schemes were the costliest crime in the FBI's figures and Trump said Americans reported losing more than 20 billion dollars to online crime and the FBI's yearly report backs that up. So, published in April 2026, they put the total for 2025 at nearly 21 billion dollars.

People over 60 reported 7.7 billion of that and according to the reporting on the same report more than 11 billion dollars of the losses involved crypto. That's more than half of the total and that's only what got reported. A lot of people never reported at all and often because they're embarrassed, right? Trump made that point himself and said the real number was probably a lot higher. As always, this not financial advice, please do your own research, guys.

Like if you're bullish and let's get deep into this video.

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Now, I promised I'd come back to the link in the description. I'm going to do that right now, okay? It's going to take a couple of minutes. So, we just talked about exactly why it's there and I'm going to explain it more to you now. I'm not going to tell you to buy XRP.

No, because there might be better opportunities for you. There there probably is better opportunities for you. I wouldn't know because I don't know your situation and it should be made on a calm day, right? Not when someone's shouting down the phone at you. So, that's what this is for.

Which coins you'd never sell in a hurry, [snorts] who in the family knows you hold them, which numbers you ring if someone fell off, how much you're comfortable keeping with any one company. Very few of us have ever put that much information on paper and our altcoin pro course helps you build that plan around your coins from how much each one of should get to how you keep the whole lot safe. How to get started, all you got to do is click the link in the description, fill in the short form, book your free 15-minute call and then one of the team will walk you through your own strategy and your own situation, all right? If you're watching this on your phone, all you got to do is tap more under the video and it's the first thing you'll see. Book it while things are quiet, while nothing's wrong, and you've got a clear head, and that's exactly when a plan like this is easiest to make.

So, let's go back to that billion dollars. What does it actually mean when the government says money has been frozen? Well, a freeze means the money can't move and it's stuck where it is, usually an exchange or with a company that issued the token. While the lawyers work out who it belongs to, that's what they do, and it's a pause button. It's definitely not a refund, right?

Earlier in the round table, Trump said he had signed an executive order in March 2026 that set up what he called a victim restoration program to recover as much money for victims as possible. And then, he was refreshing the honest about how it goes. Check out this clip.

I wish we could get it all, but it oftentimes doesn't work that way because they spend it. They spend it before they get it.

That's the honest version. Frozen money isn't the same as getting it back. So, by the time anyone catches up, a lot of it has been spent, swapped, or moved on. And when you put the numbers from the room side by side, they don't quite line up. Trump said federal law enforcement had warned over 10,000 Americans and prevented 1.6 billion dollars in losses.

Now, later in the same hour, the FBI director, Cash Patel, we all know very well, put it at 11,000 Americans and 675 million dollars. They may be counting different things, but nobody in the room explained the gap. So, then Patel gave the biggest number of the day.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with our partners at DOJ and the United States Attorney's Offices, have seized over 17 billion dollars from these scam compound fraud centers. Seized it. That means that's money we got back. We're going to use it with our DOJ partners to prosecute these individuals and then get that money back to the American people from which it was stolen.

17 billion dollars. He didn't break that number down, but most of it very likely comes from one case. Now, in October 2025, American prosecutors charged Shenji, the chairman of Cambodian business group called Prince Group, over forced labor scam compounds. Now, at the same time, they went to court to take about 127,000 Bitcoin, worth around 15 billion dollars, in October 2025. Now, the Justice Department called it the largest forfeiture action in history, but here's the thing to know is Tell said that's money we've got back.

And when he went to describe his plan to get back to victims after prosecutions. Now, that's a process that runs through the courts and could take years. So, seized means the government holds it. It doesn't mean the people who've lost it have been paid. In the US, money that's forfeited through the courts can be paid back to victims through a process called remission where every victim files a claim and has to show what they've lost.

Now, it works, but it's slow and it only covers money that was actually caught. And if loss was never reported, it's way harder to show it was yours. So, who's actually going after these gangs? Well, according to the people in that room, it's a bigger operation than most of us would guess. Patel said the FBI's Operation Blackout has dismantled more than 20 scam compounds across Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

And the Attorney General, Todd Blanche, said that in April 2026, the FBI and the Dubai police announced that at least 276 arrests and the nine scam centers shut down. And by Patel's account, a pushing Ghana and Nigeria in early October 2026 led to about 300 more arrests and $50 million seized. Now, Blanche also mentioned a crackdown in September 2026 on a criminal marketplace called Zinbi. That's X I N B I. Where the government restrained $52 million on the day the Treasury sanctioned Zinbi.

Now, according to the reports in September 2026, the Justice Department credited the stablecoin company Tether with freezing those funds. A stablecoin is a token built to stay on $1. All right? And the firm behind it, lock it. So, that's how a lot of frozen money gets frozen.

Somebody with a switch in the middle has to agree to flip it. And the tech companies are in, too. Patel named Meta, Google, Microsoft, IBM. They're all shutting down networks the gangs rely on. And Blanche actually thanked Meta and Elon Musk's X.

Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, went further, right? He said that for the first time, the government is using offensive cyber capabilities against foreign scam centers. Which actually means going after the computer systems directly. Now, that's his claim. And nobody outside can check what he's done in secret, but it shows how serious the White House wants it to be seen.

So, how does the money go missing in the first place? Well, Miller described the call that a lot of families will recognize.

Your your grandmother, your grandfather, your parents, they get a phone call saying a loved one has been arrested. Wire $10,000 right away to get them out of jail. Except nobody was arrested, nobody's in jail, and the money goes to a foreign scam center, and then that that pension, that retirement account that senior citizen has saved for their entire lives is gone.

That's the call to watch for. Someone you love is in trouble, there's no time, and the money has to go straight away, by wire, by gift card, or by crypto. Now, Blanche also added another version. He said that these centers impersonate law enforcement officers on the phone with fictitious arrests. So, the voice on the line said the police or the FBI and your bank's fraud team.

Here's where it gets tricky, though. Patel said the FBI contacts people first.

Mr. President, to date, your administration has prevented 11,000 Americans from being fleeced of $675 million. That means they were not scammed. We went out to them through our interagency partners and our relationships, and we said, "We think you are being scammed," and we shut it down before it even happened.

Now, that's good news for those 11,000 people, but think about what it means for everyone else. These are real calls from real officials warning you about a scam and fake calls from scammers pretending to be those officials. Now, on the phone, they can sound exactly alike, so you can't judge a call by how official it sounds. You need a rule that works either way, and I'll give you one at the end. So, what has any of this got to do with XRP?

Well, nobody at the round table mentioned XRP or Ripple, but there is a flip side for us. XRP in your wallet has no issue at the call. So, if a scammer talks you into sending it to their wallet, there's no switch in the middle. Investigators can follow it on the public ledger, but it can usually only be stopped if it lands at an exchange that agrees to freeze it. That's why speed matters.

If the worst happens, report it straight away to the FBI at ic3.gov, and if you're in the US, call the police fraud reporting service where you live, and to every exchange the money touched. So, what can we actually do? Well, Trump gave one piece of advice at the round table, and it's a good one.

And if you think you may be a victim, seek out help from trusted family members, and often times they're going to know exactly where to go, but you start heading for law enforcement.

Talk to someone you trust before the money moves. And I'll add to that rule and say I'd ask you to share it with anyone in your family who might get one of these calls. Hang up and call back. Whoever rings, whether it's the bank, the police, the FBI, an exchange, or a grandchild in trouble, you put the phone down. Then you call back on a number you found yourself.

The number on the back of your card, the number on the exchange's website, or grandchild's own mobile number. Never the number they gave you, right? And never a link they send you. A real official won't mind. A real bank will wait.

The only person who needs you to stay on the line is the scammer because the whole trick only works while you're rushed and scared. And it works for XRP the same way. Nobody genuinely will ever need you to send coins to keep them safe, and nobody genuine will ever ask you to keep your secret recovery words or speak them out loud. And if anyone does, that's your answer. So, that's the round table, a government taking scam gang seriously.

Some big numbers that don't all agree in a freeze that is a pause, not a payout. And for XRP holders, coin nobody can freeze on a ledger, which means the best protection is the plan you make and the habits that you you keep. So, here's my question. Have you or someone in your family ever been on the end of these calls? And what was the thing that gave it away?

Tell me in the comments because it will help everyone. And you could help someone spot the next one, right? So, if you want to stay one step ahead of the people trying to take it, hit subscribe. And we're going to be doing a few videos like this throughout the campaign to make sure that we are safe in this market. Now, crypto carries risk and past results are no guarantee of future ones, guys.

As always, stay safe, stay bullish. Bullish.