US Sanctions 45 Prince Group Targets as Crypto Scam Crackdown Widens

The US Treasury sanctioned four individuals and 41 entities on November 5, saying they helped hold together the Prince Group transnational criminal organization and its business web. A separate Malaysian national was also designated over what Treasury describes as a scammer network run out of Madagascar. The designations rest on official allegations laid out in the sanctions announcement.

According to Treasury, the newly named people and companies stepped in after earlier 2025 and 2026 designations, managing offshore entities, masking who really owned them and servicing executives already on the blacklist. Treasury also points to the wider fraud economy: digital asset investment scams, romance cons, and Southeast Asian compounds where workers were coerced or trafficked into running the schemes.

The money trail rarely starts onchain. Treasury says payments often begin in banks or payment apps before reaching exchanges and wallets, which is why stolen funds can flow through property firms, corporate agents and ordinary commercial middlemen. Chasing a single wallet address, the agency warns, misses the structures that let a network rebuild itself.

Treasury credits law enforcement and overseas partners, including authorities in the British Virgin Islands and the UK, for helping tie financial accounts, registrations and directors to onchain evidence. It also flags a hard limit of public blockchains: an address shows movement, not who arranged a company or which employee signed off on an account. Innocent customers of related services can get caught in the blast radius, making accurate identification critical.

The agency's guidance for victims of online investment fraud: keep transaction identifiers, messages and platform records, and report them to official authorities. It warns against paying third parties that promise guaranteed recovery of funds. For businesses, Treasury says the immediate job is checking whether any sanctioned name, alias or beneficial owner already sits inside existing relationships.