Nearly 9,000 people across the United States were contacted by the FBI while they were actively losing money to cryptocurrency-investment fraud, and roughly three out of four had no idea they were being scammed. The program behind those interventions, Operation Level Up, has prevented an estimated $562,726,245 in losses as of March 2026, according to the Department of Justice. In 93 of those cases, the situation was dire enough that victims were referred to FBI specialists for suicide intervention.
How Operation Level Up grew from 4,300 to 8,935 notifications
The FBI began Operation Level Up through its Internet Crime Complaint Center, using verified @fbi.gov email addresses and phone calls to reach people while fraudulent transfers were still in progress. According to the FBI’s own description of its intervention program, agents and victim specialists contact individuals after financial institutions, exchanges, or other partners flag suspicious activity that appears linked to investment scams.
By January 2025, the program had contacted more than 4,300 potential victims and saved an estimated $285 million. By December 2025, those figures had climbed to 8,103 victims notified and $511,511,288 in estimated savings, with 80 people referred for suicide intervention. Three months later, the March 2026 count reached 8,935 victims notified and $562,726,245 in prevented losses, with suicide referrals rising to 93.
That acceleration matters. The program added 832 new notifications and roughly $51 million in additional prevented losses in just three months between December 2025 and March 2026. The 77% figure, the share of contacted victims who did not know they were being defrauded, has remained consistent across reporting periods. That consistency suggests the scam operations are effective at disguising themselves and that most victims would have continued sending money without an outside warning.
Operation Level Up also illustrates how closely law enforcement now collaborates with banks, payment processors, and cryptocurrency platforms. When a partner flags a risky transfer tied to a suspected scam, the FBI can move quickly to verify the concern and then contact the customer, often while funds are still en route. In some cases, that means persuading a victim to halt a wire transfer or crypto purchase; in others, it involves coordinating with the institution to freeze accounts long enough to stop additional losses.
Enforcement actions tied to Southeast Asian scam networks
Operation Level Up’s notification work runs alongside a broader crackdown on large-scale fraud networks. A coordinated takedown of scam centers led to at least 276 arrests of alleged managers and recruiters, with charges unsealed in San Diego. Prosecutors describe sprawling operations in Southeast Asia that used call centers and scripted pitches to lure victims into bogus investment opportunities.
Court records from a separate domain-seizure case describe how operators registered websites that impersonated legitimate financial firms and steered victims toward fraudulent trading apps, some of which were later removed by Apple. The State Department has offered up to $10 million for information leading to the financial disruption of the Tai Chang network operating scam centers in Burma, underscoring how seriously U.S. authorities view the threat.
These enforcement actions reveal the industrial scale of the fraud. The operations are often called “pig butchering” schemes because scammers build trust with targets over weeks or months before directing them to fake investment platforms. Victims believe they are watching real returns on cryptocurrency trades when the platforms are entirely fabricated. The FBI’s approach of intervening during the scam, rather than only investigating after losses are complete, represents a shift toward real-time victim protection and complements the arrests and domain seizures aimed at dismantling the infrastructure behind the fraud.
Gaps in the data and what to watch next
The program’s aggregate numbers are strong, but several questions remain unanswered. The FBI and Justice Department have not publicly broken down Operation Level Up notifications by state, age group, or type of cryptocurrency, making it difficult to see which communities are most affected. It is also unclear how often victims cooperate with agents once contacted, or how many continue sending money despite being warned.
Another open question is how sustainable the program’s growth will be. The jump from 4,300 contacts in early 2025 to nearly 9,000 by March 2026 reflects both expanding partnerships and the sheer scale of the fraud problem. If scam networks continue to evolve, the FBI may need additional staffing, technology, and foreign cooperation to keep pace with new tactics, including the use of deepfake identities and more sophisticated social engineering.
Observers will also be watching how often Operation Level Up leads directly to criminal charges. While the program is framed primarily as a victim-protection initiative, the information collected from interrupted scams could help investigators map networks, trace money flows, and identify key organizers. As more cases tied to these interventions move through the courts, they may offer a clearer picture of how effective real-time alerts are at both saving money and building prosecutable cases.
For potential investors, the lessons are immediate. The fact that 77% of people contacted by the FBI did not realize they were being defrauded underscores how convincing these schemes can be, even to financially savvy professionals. Sudden investment opportunities introduced through social media or messaging apps, pressure to move funds to unfamiliar platforms, and promises of unusually high returns are all warning signs. Until more detailed data is released, Operation Level Up’s numbers stand as a stark reminder that if law enforcement has to call to stop a transfer, the scam has already gone much further than most victims ever imagined.
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