Exclusive: FBI Has Blocked over $1 Billion in Theft by Cyber Criminals Since January 2025
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Recovery Asset Team has denied more than $1 billion in attempted cyber theft since January 2025, which is a 16 percent increase over the same period under the previous administration, the bureau told Breitbart News on Thursday.
FBI Director Kash Patel, in figures the FBI Office of Public Affairs provided exclusively to Breitbart News, credited the recovery total to what the bureau described as a wholesale rebuild of its cyber operations.
Patel said the number shows a shift in how the bureau confronts financial criminals.
This is the latest success in this FBI’s total overhaul in our ability to crush cyber criminals. Our Recovery Asset Team’s $1 billion in denied theft since January 2025 – a 16% increase since the same period under the previous administration – shows we are built for the mission. We’re cutting off the criminal actors early, blowing up almost $20 billion worth of scam compounds overseas with our work through Operation Blackout, and completely modernizing our capability to stay on top of a constantly changing threat landscape. This is no longer an FBI that waits to act – this FBI is moving quickly, efficiently, and decisively in ways never seen before.
The Recovery Asset Team operates the bureau’s Financial Fraud Kill Chain, a process that races to freeze fraudulent wire transfers by coordinating with banks before the money moves beyond reach. In 2025, the team initiated roughly 3,900 such actions against more than $1.1 billion in attempted theft and froze $679 million, a 58 percent success rate, according to the FBI’s most recent Internet Crime Complaint Center report.
Ben Williamson, an assistant director in the FBI Office of Public Affairs, tied the recovery figures to Operation Blackout, the bureau’s campaign against overseas scam compounds. Williamson said the operation has seized roughly $17 billion, arrested hundreds of suspects, freed thousands of trafficked workers, warned more than 10,000 Americans before they lost money, and prevented an estimated $660 million in losses.
Patel has described the targeted compounds as fortified settlements rather than call centers. “These are towns, these are cities,” Patel told Fox News Digital. “These are actual villages with structures where they force people into forced labor.”
The intelligence chief said older Americans make up the bulk of the victims. The bureau has referred 99 victims for suicide intervention, seized 584 scam websites, and sent 7,670 fraudulent accounts to private companies for action, according to Fox News Digital.
In May, the bureau reported a then-record $8 billion cryptocurrency seizure and 275 arrests in Dubai, where authorities said nine raided compounds each generated about $6 million a year in fraud. An August raid at Cambodia’s roughly 200-acre O’Smach Resort compound involved searches of 28 buildings over three days.
The announcement follows earlier FBI cyber actions Patel has detailed in his weekly updates. In June, the bureau reported that FBI Cleveland disrupted a Chinese phishing platform linked to nearly $1.9 billion in losses worldwide under Operation Riptide. In April, the FBI and Justice Department announced a scam-center takedown charging two Chinese nationals, restraining about $700 million in cryptocurrency, and seizing 503 websites.
Americans filed more than one million cybercrime complaints in 2025 for the first time in the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center’s history, reporting $20.9 billion in losses, with adults 60 and older accounting for $7.7 billion.
