President Donald Trump will address a White House gathering on Wednesday to emphasize his administration’s ongoing initiatives against international criminal syndicates that trick U.S. citizens into fraudulent digital asset ventures, a government official shared with Reuters.
These remarks form part of a broader conference centered on stopping cyber crime. Trump and several cabinet members intend to highlight authorities seizing bogus cryptocurrency investment web domains and their efforts to neutralize online identity-theft frauds, the source reportedly mentioned.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Todd Blanche are anticipated to participate.
This gathering follows an executive order issued in March wherein Trump instructed the Justice Department to prioritize discovering and prosecuting online swindlers. He later issued a memorandum instructing the Department of Homeland Security to collaborate with private enterprises in monitoring overseas criminal hacking syndicates.
Record losses in internet and crypto scams
The metrics supporting this regulatory push are severe. Americans filed upwards of one million reports regarding online frauds to the FBI throughout 2025, marking a 17% rise compared to 2024, alongside historic financial damages.
Digital asset fraud represented greater than half of that economic impact. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 181,565 cryptocurrency-related complaints and $11.366 billion in total damages for 2025, establishing virtual coins as the single most financially damaging segment in the filing. Digital currency investment schemes drained $7.2 billion from that aggregate figure.
The bureau traced a large portion of this activity back to structured illicit operations located in Southeast Asia—specifically Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar—which exploit human trafficking survivors as forced labor inside fraudulent operations. Perpetrators initiate contact via text messaging, social networking sites, matchmaking platforms, and web advertisements before directing targets toward fake portals displaying fabricated gains. When targets attempt cash-outs, swindlers demand taxes and fees before disappearing.
Individuals aged 60 and older carried the heaviest burden, sustaining $4.43 billion in digital currency-linked detriments. Crypto ATM frauds generated $389 million in damages, a 58% surge from 2024, while recovery schemes aimed at prior targets produced an additional $1.4 billion.
The international landscape appears more severe. Chainalysis figures released in January indicated that unlawful crypto wallet addresses received at least $154 billion during 2025, representing a 162% elevation over 2024. Hackers connected to North Korea plundered $2 billion across the year, which included the $1.5 billion Bybit breach, standing as the largest digital currency theft on record.
Law enforcement has generated some positive outcomes. The FBI initiative Operation Level Up notified 3,780 targets of active digital currency investment fraud during 2025 and saved an estimated $225.8 million. A Scam Center Strike Force uniting the DOJ, FBI, Secret Service, State Department, and the Treasury’s OFAC focuses directly on the Southeast Asian facilities.
As reported by Reuters, Trump and his sons have grown the family wealth by at least $2.3 billion through their primary digital currency projects, whereas the backers they solicited experienced a $2.3 billion loss.
In October 2025, Trump granted a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the Binance head convicted after the trading platform admitted guilt regarding failures to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering framework.
Democratic lawmakers in Congress have accused the Trump family of leveraging the presidency to build personal wealth through digital currency undertakings, an allegation the White House denies.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly stated that “all actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”
Originally published at https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/president-trump-to-highlight-crackdown.
