Scams

US President Donald Trump has explicitly ruled out a presidential pardon for Sam Bankman-Fried, ending speculation that the former FTX CEO could receive clemency under a crypto-friendly administration. The decision draws a clear line between regulatory disputes and outright fraud, reinforcing that large-scale misuse of customer funds remains beyond political protection. Markets quickly priced in the finality of the stance, with FTX Token (FTT) extending losses as sentiment around any legal or structural recovery continues to deteriorate.

On January 8, 2026, on-chain activity showed an anonymous wallet (0x6C8EC8f1) receive about 8,535 ETH, and Truebit Protocol's TRU plunged amid an alleged exploit worth roughly $26.44 million. According to Cyvers, real-time monitoring flagged the transfer as anomalous, with around half of the funds routed via Tornado Cash. Truebit said it is working with law enforcement, and TRU was near $0.072 at publication.

Chainalysis told CryptoSlate that in 2025 stablecoins comprised 84% of the $154 billion in illicit crypto transaction volume, overtaking Bitcoin as the preferred asset for criminal use. The report also highlights DPRK-linked hacks totaling $2 billion and Russia’s ruble-backed A7A5 token moving $93.3 billion within its first year, while illicit activity remained under 1% of the crypto economy.

Zscaler ThreatLabz reported three malicious Bitcoin-themed npm packages that installed a remote access trojan dubbed NodeCordRAT. The packages bitcoin-main-lib, bitcoin-lib-js, and bip40 were removed from the npm registry in November 2025 after accumulating over 3,400 downloads, and the malware targets Chrome credentials, .env tokens, and MetaMask wallet secrets.

Cambodian authorities arrested Chinese-born tycoon Chen Zhi in Cambodia and extradited him to China over an alleged $12 billion crypto fraud that used so-called "pig butchering" scams. His network is accused of forcing staff to run cyber-fraud compounds, collecting 127,271 Bitcoin now valued at about $11.6 billion, which has been seized. The case has intensified concerns about how technology and cryptocurrencies are exploited for large-scale criminal activity.

On January 6, Cambodian authorities arrested businessman Chen Zhi and deported him to China, where he is accused of running a large‑scale crypto scam and money laundering network tied to a 127,000 BTC seizure worth around $15 billion. Chen, founder of Cambodia-based Prince Group, now faces potential prosecution under Chinese law, as investigators detail how funds allegedly flowed through shell companies, exchanges, and mining operations. Regulators and crypto firms have been working to trace and freeze assets, with reported U.S. losses from similar “pig-butchering” schemes reaching $3.6 billion in 2024.

Arkham Intelligence data indicates that crypto wallets associated with the US Government transferred more than $225 million in USDT, funds allegedly seized from pig-butchering fraud schemes. The size of the transfer aligns with a stablecoin seizure exceeding $225 million that the US Department of Justice disclosed in June 2025, linked to a large money-laundering network and hundreds of victims. Court documents describe how US Secret Service and FBI investigators traced hundreds of thousands of crypto transactions as part of the operation.

On January 5, Ledger informed customers that its e-commerce partner Global-e suffered a breach exposing names, emails, phone numbers, and order details. Soon after, phishing emails falsely promoting a Ledger–Trezor merger urged users to enter 24-word recovery phrases on a spoofed site. Global-e confirmed the incident was limited to contact and order data and is investigating with cybersecurity experts.

The Flow Foundation published a technical post-mortem on Tuesday detailing a Dec. 27 protocol exploit that enabled counterfeit tokens, with confirmed losses of about $3.9 million. Validators halted the network within six hours and resumed operations two days later under a governance-approved recovery that preserved legitimate history and destroyed fake assets.

On Jan. 5, Ledger informed customers that a breach at its third‑party payment processor Global‑e exposed names, contact details, and order information, while leaving hardware wallets, passwords, and 24‑word recovery phrases untouched. Although no crypto assets were directly compromised, past incidents show that such personal data dumps can fuel long‑running phishing, extortion, and even physical robbery attempts that target confirmed hardware wallet owners. The latest leak renews scrutiny of the broader commerce infrastructure around self‑custody and highlights the offline risks created when shipping and billing data is linked to crypto holdings.