DOJ Flags Three Crypto Cases in ‘America First’ Push Against Fraud

The U.S. Division of Justice highlighted three high-profile fraud instances the place cryptocurrency performed a cloth position in its 2025 Yr in Overview, launched Thursday, noting heightened enforcement as digital property grow to be embedded in conventional fraud schemes.

The instances emerged from a record-breaking yr the place prosecutors charged 265 defendants with an combination supposed fraud loss exceeding $16 billion, greater than double final yr’s complete, in line with the DOJ’s Legal Division Fraud Part report.

The Fraud Part operates by 4 specialised models: the Overseas Corrupt Practices Act Unit, the Market, Authorities, and Shopper Fraud Unit, the Well being and Security Unit, and the Well being Care Fraud Unit, which oversees well being care fraud instances which have included seizures of crypto.

The report highlights the rising position of crypto in large-scale fraud operations.

In a single such case, Tyler Kontos, Joel “Max” Kupetz, and Jorge Sorts have been charged over a $1 billion amniotic wound allograft fraud scheme that allegedly drove greater than $600 million in improper Medicare funds.

Prosecutors say the defendants focused aged and terminally unwell sufferers with medically pointless grafts, and authorities later seized over $7.2 million in property, together with financial institution accounts and crypto.

The Justice Division additionally famous final yr’s Nationwide Well being Care Fraud Takedown, the most important in Division historical past, the place 324 people have been charged in schemes involving over $14.6 billion in supposed loss. 

Throughout that operation, authorities “seized over $245 million in money, luxurious autos, cryptocurrency, and different property.”

Final November, Travis Ford, former CEO of Wolf Capital, was sentenced to 60 months in jail for a $9.4 million crypto investment fraud that focused about 2,800 buyers, after promising “1–2% day by day returns” and diverting funds for private achieve, the DOJ mentioned.

The enforcement actions come as Congress strikes to handle crypto fraud. 

Final month, Senators Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) introduced the bipartisan SAFE Crypto Act, which might set up a federal job power inside 180 days aimed toward lowering crypto scams by cross-sector coordination.

Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg additionally urged state lawmakers this month to criminalize unlicensed crypto operations, warning {that a} $51 billion prison economic system is prospering in regulatory blind spots. 

“Crucial shift proper now could be velocity. We have seen roughly a 500% enhance in AI-enabled fraud, and that enhance is not nearly quantity—it is about how briskly prison operations can now transfer,” Ari Redbord, VP and World Head of Coverage at TRM Labs, informed Decrypt.

Redbord warned that prison teams are “now not improvising” however as a substitute “operating extremely optimized, industrial operations that may steal and launder funds in hours fairly than weeks.”

That velocity has pushed what Redbord known as the “industrialization of cash laundering,” the place skilled laundering networks now function as “shared infrastructure for rip-off networks, ransomware teams, drug trafficking organizations, North Korean cyber actors, and sanctions evaders.”

“Trying forward, AI-enabled fraud will proceed to drive enforcement priorities, from scams constructed round AI buying and selling narratives to artificial and tokenized funding schemes designed to fabricate belief,” he added.