The advisory comes days after Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1208 in early October. Sponsored by Bonta and carried in the Senate by Tim Grayson, the law lets police who seize digital assets ask courts to return them to fraud victims. Bonta's office also announced a $500,000 settlement with Fidelity Digital Assets on October 16 over withdrawal restrictions. Victims can file complaints with the state DOJ, the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI), the Federal Trade Commission, and the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. The DFPI's Crypto Scam Tracker lets people check a company before doing business with it.
The scale of the problem is growing fast. According to Bonta's office, Americans lost $20.9 billion to internet-based scams in 2025, and $11.4 billion of that came from crypto scams. California logged the most crypto-scam complaints of any state, with 20,878 complaints and $2.1 billion in losses in the FBI's 2025 report. In March 2025, the state DOJ shut down 42 fake crypto websites that had defrauded victims of at least $6.5 million. Bonta has also flagged a sharp rise in reports of Gen Z users being targeted on Twitch, TikTok, and Instagram.
The release did not give an effective date for the seizure-and-return process or estimate how many victims could be repaid, so the law's real-world results are not yet known. Attorneys advising fraud victims should note that recovery-scam impostors are now a named risk in state guidance, and that SB 1208 creates a new path to return of seized assets that clients may ask about. Watch for implementing details from the DOJ and any early court applications under the new law.