How US investigators traced $61M in crypto tied to romance scams across wallets

How investigators tracked $61 million in crypto tied to romance scams across wallets using blockchain forensics and stablecoin freezes.

Federal authorities in North Carolina seized more than $61 million in USDT, revealing how pig-butchering schemes combine emotional manipulation with fraudulent crypto investment platforms to defraud victims at scale.

Investigators leveraged the public, immutable nature of blockchain records to trace victim deposits across multiple wallets. Despite attempts to obscure the trail, every transfer remained permanently visible and reconstructable.

Using blockchain analytics, authorities clustered related addresses based on transaction flows, timing patterns and consolidation points, allowing them to connect dispersed wallets back to the broader scam network.

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