Lucky (2026–) is a 7-episode Apple TV+ crime thriller series starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Luciana ‘Lucky’ Armstrong, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as FBI Agent Billie Rand, and Annette Bening and Timothy Olyphant.
Premise: After a multi-million-dollar heist goes sideways in Las Vegas and her husband disappears, a reformed con artist must evade both the FBI and a ruthless crime boss.
I review TV shows and movies with FBI characters to share teachable moments about FBI policies, procedures, and programs, but I must admit that, although I’m a huge fan of Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, I thought the writers didn’t give her much to work with in portraying Agent Rand, who played a hard-charging, bad-ass woman agent. I worked fraud most of my FBI career, but I never got to do 10 percent of the stuff Agent Rand encounters in the series. Maybe I’m just jealous.
Let’s talk about why the FBI is involved. Agent Rand and her team broke up a multi-million dollar West Coast mob-related bio-diesel scheme; some of the money was never recovered. That’s because Lucky and her husband, Cary, stole $10 million in cash from the violent crime boss operating the scam. That cash was then converted into cryptocurrency. Who will end up with the money fuels the story’s main plot line.
So I guess we should review the FBI’s involvement in cryptocurrency fraud investigations.
The FBI regularly traces and recovers millions of dollars in cryptocurrency stolen by nefarious fraudsters. In the scheme reported here – FBI recovers $8 million swindled from failed bank’s small-town investors – the FBI was able to trace crypto breadcrumbs to one of the scammers’ digital wallets.
According to the above article, the Bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received over 69,000 complaints from the public regarding financial fraud involving the use of cryptocurrency. Funds recovered by the FBI go through federal court forfeiture reviews and orders before they are returned to the verified victims.
I also cover the general topic of con artists and fraud in my blog post – When Does the FBI Investigate Fraud?
To gain a better understanding of how the FBI investigates fraud, listen to these FBI Case File Review episodes about white-collar crime schemes. I’ll work on finding a retired agent to review a case on FBI Case File Review involving cryptocurrency fraud.
