OCALA, Fla. — When Marion County detectives showed up at an Ocala man’s front door, he figured something was wrong. Instead, they told him something almost no scam victim ever hears: the more than $450,000 he thought was gone forever had been found.
The man had been drawn into a romance that morphed into a crypto investment scheme, authorities said. He never even filed a police report, convinced the money was lost. Investigators later discovered his case was one of dozens tied to a broader, cross-state crackdown that pulled in millions in stolen cryptocurrency.
Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that the Office of Statewide Prosecution’s Cyber Fraud Enforcement Unit (CFEU) recovered a record-breaking $5.4 million in stolen cryptocurrency, the largest amount seized in a single statewide operation. “Our office made it a priority to recover as much money as possible from cyber criminals and return it to victims,” Uthmeier said in a press release via MyFloridaLegal…