OCALA, Fla. – A Florida man recently lost more than $450,000 in a romance-turned-investment scam spanning across Florida and as far as Massachusetts.
The man thought that money was gone forever; he was so sure, in fact, that he never even filed a police report, investigators said.
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Then, members of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office knocked on his door with a message: We found your money.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said during a news conference on Tuesday in Ocala that the man was one of a group of victims who were part of a case that ended with a record-breaking $5.4 million in cryptocurrency recovered.
Uthmeier said the investigation by the Office of Statewide Prosecution’s Cyber Fraud Enforcement Unit (CFEU) resulted in the largest amount of cryptocurrency that has ever been recovered in a single statewide operation.
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With assistance from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, CFEU recovered all of the stolen funds.
The victims, who were from six different Florida counties and as far as Massachusetts, were targeted in a romance-turned-investment scam, and $700,000 will now be returned to Florida victims, and $1.3 million will be returned to Massachusetts victims.
“It truly angers me that there are people in this world that have no problem making victims of citizens in our community,” said Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods. “Many times, these are senior citizens. Cyber scams and fraud may never go away but, in Marion County and in Florida, we will come after those who choose to do this.”
Uthmeier also pointed out that victims of cyber scams are often members of an older generation.
“Our office made it a priority to recover as much money as possible from cyber criminals and return it to victims,” Uthmeier said. “We are committed to tracking down these criminals and returning funds to their rightful owners.”
Uthmeier said that in the first quarter of 2026, his office recovered about $3.3 million from cyber criminals, which set a record and accounts for 45% of total recoveries made by CFEU since its inception 2.5 years ago.
CFEU has recovered an all-time total of $7.2 million, with another $12.6 million in frozen crypto assets that are in the process of being litigated and returned to victims, Uthmeier said.
The remaining funds from the recent crypto scheme that are unable to be returned to victims will go toward funding the mission of CFEU and law enforcement recovery operations, the attorney general said.
The Marion County Sheriff’s Office is responsible for assisting CFEU with recovering $6.5 million so far, the largest of any partnership in the state.
“My detectives will keep hunting you down, and the Attorney General’s office will continue to aggressively prosecute these thieves,” Woods said. “Cyber scammers have no place in Florida except behind a cell door.”
County and municipal law enforcement agencies that wish to assist in Uthmeier’s efforts to recover funds for Floridians should contact the Office of Statewide Prosecution Cyber Fraud Enforcement Unit.