Brooklyn prosecutor Alona Katz takes on crypto scam networks behind $11 billion in losses

Americans lost $11.366 billion to crypto fraud in 2025, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. In Brooklyn, one prosecutor has made it her job to make that number smaller. Assistant District Attorney Alona Katz runs the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Virtual Currency Unit, known as the VCU. Her latest operation, carried out with the FBI’s New York field office, seized or disrupted 241 scam domains and 112 servers on October 14, 2026. Three years of work behind one enforcement day The October action capped a three-year investigation into a crypto investment scam network with international ties. Investigators traced links to Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine. The 112 servers that were taken out sat both in Eastern Europe and in the United States. The network’s main hunting ground was Russian-speaking communities. The pitch started with Russian-language advertisements on Facebook. Those ads pointed victims toward fake crypto investment platforms. Then came the second act: recovery scams. Victims who had already lost money were steered into a follow-up scheme. Investigators put the losses tied to these scams in the tens of millions of dollars. Some victims lost their ...