For fraudsters and cybercriminals, 2019 has been a big year.
According to a report by CipherTrace, since January $4.26 billion in total has been stolen from cryptocurrency exchanges, investors and users.
Like any heist, a cryptocurrency hack is only successful when the perpetrators can actually make a clean getaway.
Read more: A professional hacker reveals the top security mistake people make online — and it’s something you probably do every day
This means stealing cryptocurrency from unsuspecting users, avoiding the long arm of law enforcement, laundering that money, and finally, finding an exit so that the currency actually be spent in the real world.
But that isn’t how it always plays out.
Here are some of the biggest cryptocurrency scams — and arrests — of 2019:
