While prosecutors didn’t name one perpetrator in the complaint, they did say the funds were linked to a “scam compound” in the Philippines. These locales usually house scores of workers who labor in shifts to lure victims into parting ways with their crypto, like Bitcoin, or cash. Many of these workers are employed by transnational criminal rings and forced to work against their will, according to the United Nations.

The DOJ was able to identify more than 430 victims tied to the 144 OKX accounts through which victims’ funds were laundered. One of these victims was Shan Hanes, the former CEO of Heartland Tri-State Bank in Kansas. In August 2024, Hanes was sentenced to 24 years in prison for stealing $47 million of his bank’s funds to invest in what he thought was a cryptocurrency investment opportunity that turned out to be a scam.

“These schemes harm American victims, costing them billions of dollars every year,” Matthew Galeotti, head of the DOJ’s criminal division, said in a statement.

Losses from cryptocurrency scams have accelerated in the U.S. over the past five years, according to the most recent annual report on internet crime from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. From 2023 to 2024, the money Americans lost in crypto scams skyrocketed 66% to $9.3 billion and the number of complaints the agency received more than doubled to nearly 150,000, said the government agency.

The most common crime linked to cryptocurrencies was extortion, or when bad actors manipulate photos or videos to create explicit content and lure victims into sending crypto. The second most common type was investment fraud, or when criminals promise victims outsized returns if they send them money. 

This includes Hanes, the former bank CEO. “He was the pig that was butchered,” wrote Hanes’ lawyer at the time of his sentencing. “Mr. Hanes’s vulnerability to the Pig Butcher scheme caused him to make some very bad decisions, for which he is truly sorry for causing damage to the bank and loss to the Stockholders.”