• The US Attorney's Office for DC said on 21 July 2026 that its Scam Center Strike Force has recovered more than $800M.
  • One of five civil forfeiture complaints involves more than 200 romance-scam victims and seeks approximately $12,086,914.
  • FBI IC3 logged 23,159 confidence/romance complaints and $929,287,469 in losses in 2025, up from 17,910 and $672,009,052.
  • According to The420.in, the Trump administration is citing the crackdown at a White House cybercrime event on 21 October 2026.

The US Attorney's Office for DC says its Scam Center Strike Force has recovered more than $800 million since launching in 2025, a total that includes a romance-scam case involving more than 200 victims. The figure comes from a 21 July 2026 release. According to The420.in, the Trump administration is now using it at a White House cybercrime event on 21 October, so this is a re-citation rather than a fresh announcement.

The dating link is indirect. DII found no dating platform named in the release. But romance fraud is the category that lands on dating operators' doors, and the enforcement numbers set the climate for trust and safety teams.

The DII Take

Enforcement is getting louder, and romance fraud is now part of the pitch. Yet "recovered" is doing heavy lifting: later reports describe restrained funds, not money back in victims' pockets. Operators should treat this as political tailwind for scam-fighting, not as evidence the problem is shrinking.

A romance case with 200+ victims, still only an allegation

According to the release, the case began when a private-sector partner flagged suspicious transactions to the Secret Service Cyber Fraud Task Force. Investigators concluded that more than 200 people had lost money to online romance schemes, and that the funds were moved through hundreds of intermediary addresses and mixed with money from other victims. The civil forfeiture complaint seeks approximately $12,086,914.

The civil forfeiture complaint seeks approximately $12,086,914.

It is one of five complaints filed on 21 July, covering about $26.4 million in total, with launderers predominantly in Southeast Asia. Nothing has been decided by a court.

Terminology matters. Secondary reports citing the Justice Department put restrained funds at about $938 million as of September, and say restrained money is frozen pending forfeiture, not automatically returned. CoinDesk, citing an official, gave about $833 million. In an interview reported by ABC News 4, US Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said scammers lure victims through social media 'whether it's ex or Instagram or Tinder', and that getting recovered money back to victims is the hardest part. The remark was made in passing and did not accuse Tinder of wrongdoing. DII has previously covered scammer reach on Tinder.

What to watch

The scale of the problem keeps climbing. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported 23,159 confidence/romance complaints in 2025 and $929,287,469 in reported losses, against 17,910 complaints and $672,009,052 in 2024. Watch whether forfeitures convert into victim payouts, and whether the March executive order's push on online scammers brings platform-facing obligations.

  • The US Scam Center Strike Force's $800M headline mixes "recovered", "restrained" and "halted", so compliance teams should not quote it as money returned to victims.
  • FBI IC3 data show romance losses rose from $672,009,052 to $929,287,469 between 2024 and 2025, keeping pressure on dating operators' scam controls.
  • Watch for any government move to involve private platforms, following Trump's March executive order on cybercrime.

Sources: Investigations into Cryptocurrency Scams Result in Seizure of More Than $25 Million (US Attorney's Office, District of Columbia); 2025 IC3 Annual Report (FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center); Trump Administration Highlights Global Crackdown on Overseas Crypto Scam Networks (The420.in); Trump to throw spotlight on overseas crypto abuses at White House event (CoinDesk); US Attorney Pirro says $800M frozen for victims as DC scam strike force expands (ABC News 4); Trump to Spotlight Crypto Scam Crackdown as Americans Lose $11.4B to Fraud (The Crypto Times)