Every crypto scandal on this list comes with a dollar figure, and that figure can measure three different things, only one of which is money taken from victims. Market value lost is what holders watched disappear when a token crashed. Seized or forfeited assets are what a government holds or claims, such as the roughly 127,271 bitcoin the Justice Department filed to forfeit in October 2025 as proceeds of crimes it says Prince Group's chairman directed. Only the first measure sets the rank on this page, and every ranked case meets the test of what counts as fraud: deception used to make a gain or cause a loss.
What are the top crypto scams and frauds in history?
Eight cases are ranked by the figure a court, prosecutor or regulator gives in the linked document; the two unranked rows have no such figure.
| # | Case | Years, country | Fraud type | Estimated loss (official figure) | Market value lost | Seized or forfeited | Who ran it | Outcome, October 2026 | Regulatory impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Terra and Luna | 2018 to 2022; South Korea (founder) | stablecoin fraud | over $40 billion in investor losses | peak above $50 billion | over $19 million forfeited | Do Kwon | 15 years, 11 December 2025 | stablecoins: SEC jury verdict, settlement over $4.5 billion |
| 2 | FTX and Alameda Research | 2019 to 2022; US, Bahamas | misuse of customer funds | over $8 billion of customer money | not stated | over $11 billion forfeiture ordered | Sam Bankman-Fried | 25 years; affirmed 12 June 2026 | custody: customer deposits moved to an affiliate |
| 3 | Celsius | to 2022; US | fraud, CEL token manipulation | $4.7 billion out of reach at the 12 June 2022 halt | not stated | $48,393,446 forfeiture | Alexander Mashinsky | 12 years, 8 May 2025 | yield products: safety claims were false |
| 4 | OneCoin | 2014 to 2019; Bulgaria | pyramid scheme (MLM) | over $4 billion from 3.5 million+ victims | not stated | more than $40 million for victims | Ruja Ignatova, Karl Sebastian Greenwood | Ignatova a fugitive, $5 million reward; Greenwood 20 years | MLM tokens: commissions paid for recruiting |
| 5 | BitConnect | lending ran about a year; India (founder) | Ponzi scheme, alleged | about $2.4 billion, alleged | peak $3.4 billion | over $17 million restitution | Satish Kumbhani; promoter Glenn Arcaro | Kumbhani at large when charged; Arcaro 38 months | lending programs: restitution in over 40 countries |
| 6 | Mirror Trading International (MTI) | May 2018 to March 2021; South Africa | multilevel marketing, fake trading bot | 29,421 BTC, over $1.73 billion | not stated | $1.73 billion restitution ordered | Cornelius Johannes Steynberg | default judgment; detained in Brazil since December 2021 (as of April 2023) | highest CFTC civil monetary penalty |
| 7 | Zhimin Qian's China investment fraud | 2014 to 2017; China, then UK | investment fraud; UK money laundering | about £600 million in losses | not stated | 61,000 BTC, over £5.5 billion then | Zhimin Qian (Yadi Zhang) | 11 years 8 months, 11 November 2025 | largest crypto seizure in the UK |
| 8 | Centra Tech | 2017; US | fraudulent ICO | over $32 million raised | not stated | not stated | Sohrab Sharma, Robert Farkas | 8 years; 366 days | ICO touting: the SEC's first cases |
| Prince Group (not ranked) | since about 2015; Cambodia | alleged pig butchering compounds | none; "billions" alleged | not stated | 127,271 BTC, about $15 billion, claimed | Chen Zhi (alleged) | at large when charged, October 2025 | US and UK sanctions, 14 October 2025 | |
| PlusToken, Thodex, WoToken, Africrypt (not ranked) | none found | Ponzi or exit scams | no official document reached | none found | none found | see below | Thodex founder found dead, 2025 (news report) | none found |
BitConnect's founder and Prince Group's chairman were both at large when charged, so those two rows rest on indictments. The Justice Department's own release calls an indictment "merely an allegation" and presumes every defendant innocent until proven guilty in court.
What changed in 2026
Four court and prosecutor records from this year moved cases on the list.
- On 13 April 2026 the Justice Department opened a remission process for OneCoin victims, with more than $40 million in forfeited assets and petitions due by 30 June.
- On 12 June 2026 the Second Circuit affirmed the judgment against Bankman-Fried.
- On 12 October 2026 the High Court in London held that victims' claims to Qian's seized bitcoin must be assessed under Chinese law.
- On 16 October 2026 the Mt. Gox trustee, with the court's permission, moved the repayment deadline from 31 October 2026 to 31 October 2027.
1. Terra and Luna: Do Kwon
When the UST stablecoin and the LUNA token crashed in May 2022, "investors suffered over $40 billion in losses," the Justice Department says. Their combined apparent market value had topped $50 billion at the spring 2022 peak. Kwon, Terraform Labs' former chief executive, had secretly arranged in May 2021 for a trading firm to buy large amounts of UST and support its $1 peg, prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud and on 11 December 2025 received 180 months. The SEC separately won a jury verdict and a settlement of more than $4.5 billion.
2. FTX and Alameda Research: Sam Bankman-Fried
From 2019 to 2022, the Justice Department says, Bankman-Fried channeled billions of dollars of FTX customer deposits to Alameda Research, his trading firm, and spent them on investments, political contributions and real estate. A jury convicted him on seven counts on 2 November 2023. On 28 March 2024 he got 25 years and over $11 billion in forfeiture, which the judge allowed to fund victim compensation.
3. Celsius: Alexander Mashinsky
Celsius offered retail customers "rewards" on deposited crypto. Prosecutors said Mashinsky misrepresented how safe its yield activities were and, with others, propped up the price of its CEL token, making about $48 million from his own CEL sales. When Celsius halted withdrawals on 12 June 2022, hundreds of thousands of customers had $4.7 billion they could not reach. He was sentenced to 12 years on 8 May 2025 and ordered to forfeit $48,393,446.
4. OneCoin and Ruja Ignatova, the Cryptoqueen
OneCoin, based in Sofia, Bulgaria, sold a cryptocurrency with no value through a multilevel marketing network that paid commissions for recruiting buyers. Between late 2014 and late 2016 alone it took in more than $4 billion from at least 3.5 million victims, the Justice Department says. Karl Sebastian Greenwood, who founded it with Ignatova, was sentenced to 20 years on 12 September 2023.
Ruja Ignatova's current whereabouts are unknown. She flew from Sofia to Athens on 25 October 2017 and has not been seen publicly since. The FBI lists her among its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives under the alias "CryptoQueen" and says she may travel on a German passport to the UAE, Bulgaria, Germany, Russia, Greece or Eastern Europe, with a State Department reward of up to $5 million.
5. BitConnect: Satish Kumbhani
A February 2022 indictment says BitConnect's lending program claimed returns from a "BitConnect Trading Bot" but paid earlier investors with money from later ones, which is how a Ponzi scheme works. Kumbhani and others allegedly took about $2.4 billion, and BitConnect reached a peak market capitalization of $3.4 billion. Kumbhani was at large when charged.
Glenn Arcaro, the top US promoter, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 38 months. In January 2023 a court ordered over $17 million in restitution to about 800 victims in more than 40 countries.
6. Mirror Trading International: Cornelius Johannes Steynberg
From about May 2018 to March 2021, a US court's order finds, Steynberg ran an international fraudulent multilevel marketing scheme. It took in at least 29,421 BTC, worth over $1,733,838,372 at the end of March 2021, from at least 23,000 people in the US and more elsewhere. MTI claimed a trading "bot" made forex profits; the defendants misappropriated all of the bitcoin. The order set restitution and an equal penalty, the highest civil monetary penalty in any CFTC case, the agency says. MTI itself was in liquidation in South Africa by April 2023.
7. The UK's 61,000 bitcoin case: Zhimin Qian
Between 2014 and 2017, the Crown Prosecution Service says, Qian ran an investment fraud in China with more than 128,000 victims and losses of about £600 million, then turned about £20.2 million of it into bitcoin. The Metropolitan Police seized 61,000 bitcoin, worth more than £5.5 billion at her September 2025 guilty plea and the largest crypto seizure in the UK. On 11 November 2025 she was sentenced to 11 years and 8 months.
8. Centra Tech: Sohrab Sharma and Robert Farkas
The SEC alleged that Centra's 2017 initial coin offering (ICO) raised more than $32 million from thousands of investors using fictional executives, invented Visa and MasterCard partnerships and paid celebrity promotion. In November 2018 the SEC settled its first ICO touting cases with boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. and producer DJ Khaled, who had not disclosed $100,000 and $50,000 from Centra. In the criminal case, Sharma received 8 years in March 2021 and Farkas 366 days in December 2020. Both had pleaded guilty.
Prince Group and Chen Zhi: an allegation, not ranked
On 14 October 2025 the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging Chen Zhi, chairman of Cambodia's Prince Group, with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. It alleges that trafficked workers held in forced labor compounds ran crypto investment frauds known as pig butchering that stole billions of dollars. Prosecutors filed to forfeit about 127,271 bitcoin, the largest forfeiture action in the Department's history. The US Treasury sanctioned Prince Group the same day, and the UK announced sanctions on entities related to it. The documents give no loss figure, so the case has no rank.
PlusToken, Thodex, WoToken and Africrypt: no official figure
All four were on the earlier version of this list. For PlusToken, WoToken and Africrypt, no court or regulator document with a figure could be opened for this page, so none is given. Thodex was a Turkish exchange. It went offline in April 2021. Hürriyet Daily News reported that an Istanbul court sentenced founder Faruk Fatih Özer to 11,196 years on 7 September 2023, with the prosecutor's indictment putting losses at 356 million lira. Officials confirmed on 1 November 2025 that he had been found dead in his prison cell.
How do you spot a fake crypto exchange?
The ranked cases leave four warning signs to check before trusting a platform with money. Withdrawals stop, as at Celsius on 12 June 2022. Customer deposits move to a related firm, as FTX's did to Alameda. A named partner never confirms the partnership, as Visa and MasterCard never did for Centra. And profits are credited to a trading bot that nobody outside can audit, the story at both BitConnect and MTI.
Mt. Gox and Bybit: hacks, not ranked
Mt. Gox, a bitcoin exchange in Tokyo, Japan, filed for civil rehabilitation at the Tokyo District Court on 28 February 2014. Its announcement said about 750,000 bitcoins deposited by users and about 100,000 of its own had disappeared, probably stolen through abuse of a bug. The rehabilitation trustee has largely completed repayments to creditors who finished the procedures.
Bybit lost about $1.5 billion in virtual assets on or about 21 February 2025, and the FBI attributed the theft to North Korea.
What is the difference between a crypto hack and a crypto scam?
A hack takes assets by breaking into a system without the owner's consent, as North Korean actors did at Bybit. A scam or fraud persuades victims to hand money over on false promises, as OneCoin did with coins that had no value. For controls the difference is practical. A hack is a failure of the platform's own security, while a fraud draws in customer payments that screening and monitoring can see.
How are stolen crypto funds laundered?
Mixers pool many users' coins and pay them out again, so the link between sender and receiver breaks. The US Treasury sanctioned Tornado Cash on 8 August 2022, saying it had been used to launder more than $7 billion since 2019, and removed the sanctions on 21 March 2025.
The criminal case went on. On 6 August 2025 a jury convicted Roman Storm, one of Tornado Cash's founders, on one count, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business; prosecutors said the mixer moved more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds.
Splitting is the second route. The Prince Group case alleges "spraying" and "funneling": large amounts broken up across scores of addresses, then gathered again into fewer ones, with bitcoin kept in unhosted wallets whose private keys Chen held. After the Bybit theft, the FBI said North Korean actors had converted some of the stolen assets to bitcoin and spread them across thousands of addresses on several blockchains, and it asked exchanges to block transactions with the addresses it listed.
Turning coins into cash is where Qian's laundering stalled. She and Jian Wen, later imprisoned for money laundering, tried to buy London properties valued at up to £23.5 million, but the CPS says they were "hampered by difficulties transferring sufficient Bitcoin into cash and by 'know your customer' questions."
How did crypto frauds change global regulation?
| Jurisdiction | Rule | Status, October 2026 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| EU | MiCA, Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 | providers active before 30 December 2024 could continue only until 1 July 2026 at the latest (Article 143(3)) | authorization of crypto asset service providers |
| US | GENIUS Act (S. 1582) | signed 18 July 2025 | regulation of payment stablecoins |
| US | CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633) | passed the House 294 to 134 on 17 July 2025; Senate cloture failed 49 to 50 on 15 September 2026 | offer and sale of digital commodities, SEC and CFTC roles |
| FATF members | travel rule for VASPs (Recommendation 16) | 91 of 109 responding jurisdictions have laws; in 55 of those 91, no supervisory findings or action yet | sender and recipient details on transfers |
None of these crypto rules names a case, but each answers a weakness the ranking shows. Terra's UST was a stablecoin, and the GENIUS Act, signed on 18 July 2025, sets US rules for payment stablecoins that take effect by 18 January 2027.
FTX and Celsius held customer assets. In the EU, MiCA requires crypto asset service providers to be authorized, and the transition for firms already operating ended on 1 July 2026 at the latest. The CLARITY Act would set rules for the offer and sale of digital commodities by the SEC and the CFTC, but on 15 September 2026 the Senate fell short of cloture on it, 49 votes to 50.
Laws on paper run ahead of supervision. In its July 2026 targeted update, the FATF counted 91 of 109 responding jurisdictions with travel rule laws. In 55 of those 91, 60 percent, supervisors had yet to issue findings or directives, or to take enforcement or other supervisory steps, on compliance with the rule.
Which lessons do the biggest crypto fraud cases teach?
- A bot that pays steady returns is a claim to test. Behind BitConnect's bot, the indictment alleges, later investors paid earlier ones, and MTI's operators misappropriated every bitcoin they took in.
- Commissions for recruiting point to a pyramid. OneCoin paid them, and the CFTC calls MTI a multilevel marketing scheme; a scheme that pays for recruits needs a steady flow of new money to keep paying.
- Customer assets need a known location. FTX moved deposits to Alameda, so ask where customer assets sit and who can move them.
- A price someone props up can fall when the buying ends. Kwon arranged secret UST purchases in May 2021, and Mashinsky and others spent hundreds of millions buying CEL, at times with customer deposits.
- Founders can disappear. Ignatova has been missing since October 2017 and Kumbhani was at large when charged; OneCoin's remission fund held more than $40 million against over $4 billion taken.
How can technology help prevent crypto frauds?
In 2025 the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 181,565 cryptocurrency complaints, 21 percent more than in 2024, and $11.366 billion in losses, $7.228 billion of it from crypto investment fraud (IC3 2025 report, pages 52 and 53). Several ranked cases passed through regulated firms on the way: MTI took bitcoin from at least 23,000 people in the US, and part of Prince Group's alleged proceeds ended up in wallets at exchanges and in bank accounts.
Two checks work at that point. Wallet screening tests an address against sanctions and risk data before funds move, and know your transaction (KYT) checks each payment against what the firm knows of the customer. complead, formerly Sanction Scanner, offers AML for crypto businesses that combines a wallet with the claimed identity into one entity before screening either.
At the payment itself, fraud detection and prevention means scoring each transfer before it leaves. complead's fraud prevention engine does that with rules, anomaly detection and a model trained on the firm's own confirmed fraud, and returns one of four answers inside the payment request (approve, decline, review or step up). A review answer holds the payment for a person to decide.
How can you avoid a crypto scam?
Run the five lessons above against any offer, platform or promoter before you send money to it. Two warnings come straight from the authorities. The SEC's 2018 release on the touting cases told investors not to make decisions based on celebrity endorsements. And the IC3 logged 10,516 recovery scam complaints in 2025, so distrust anyone who charges a fee to recover lost crypto.
The Justice Department alleges that one Brooklyn network moved millions of dollars from over 250 Prince Group victims in the US. Who moved the money out of the victims' bank accounts, and how does a bank spot that money mule account?
How this ranking was built
A case is ranked only when a court, prosecutor or regulator gives a figure for it in the document linked from its row, and the rank follows that figure. Market value lost and assets seized or forfeited have their own columns and never set a rank.
Each official figure is what its document measures: investor losses (Terra and Luna, Qian), customer money taken (FTX), assets out of reach (Celsius), money taken in (OneCoin, BitConnect, MTI) or money raised (Centra). No amount is converted.
Every amount, date and outcome was checked against its linked record on 24 October 2026. The records include Justice Department releases and indictments, court dockets, SEC, CFTC and Treasury releases, FBI and IC3 publications, CPS and Metropolitan Police releases, and the official EU and US law texts. Charges without a verdict are written as allegations.
Some cases sit outside the ranking. Prince Group has a forfeiture claim but no loss figure. PlusToken, WoToken and Africrypt have no official figure that could be opened, Thodex's figures come from a news report, and Mt. Gox and Bybit were hacks.
This list was first published on 7 August 2025 and rebuilt on court and regulator records in October 2026, which corrected MTI's bitcoin count (29,421, where the earlier page said 23,000) and dropped an unsourced $30 billion total. It is to be updated when an outcome in the table changes, when the GENIUS Act takes effect and when the next IC3 annual report is published.
Sinan Tekin, Regional Sales Manager at complead, who writes about sanctions screening, AML for lenders and crypto, wrote this page. Ufuk Gürdaş, Compliance Specialist (MASAK certified compliance officer; ICA Certificate in Compliance; MBA in Auditing; 10+ years in banking and fintech compliance), is its compliance reviewer.
Last reviewed: 25 October 2026.
