Nine Companies Joined the DOJ to Freeze $3.8M in Fraud Crypto

Coinbase froze more than $3.8 million in cryptocurrency tied to Southeast Asian fraud networks on June 3, after the U.S. Department of Justice’s Scam Center Strike Force shared targeting intelligence with nine technology companies during a four-day “Disruption Week” that the DOJ described as a first-of-its-kind event combining government and private industry against crypto fraud.

Among those companies were Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Google, SpaceX, Silent Push, TRM Labs (a blockchain analytics firm), and Zenlayer, alongside foreign police from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. Royal Thai Police arrested 63 people linked to scam centers during the operation; more than 1.4 million scam accounts, pages, and groups were removed from Facebook and Instagram, the largest takedown the Strike Force has produced since U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro launched it in November 2025.

Nine Companies, Five Foreign Forces

The sessions ran from May 18 to May 21 in Washington. FBI agents, U.S. Secret Service investigators, and ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Homeland Security Investigations officers arrived with specific targets: named individuals and infrastructure in Southeast Asia identified as running cryptocurrency investment fraud against Americans. Companies matched those targets against their own networks and acted voluntarily against anyone violating terms of service; the in-person format let companies verify in real time whether named targets were active on their platforms.

Microsoft disabled roughly 20,000 accounts linked to scam operations. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service disrupted thousands of internet terminals connected to those criminal networks. The cryptocurrency exchange’s freeze covered funds identified as fraud proceeds moving through its platform. Meta, which took the lead in coordinating the event and encouraging broad participation, organized the Washington sessions; the full participant list and outcomes appear in the DOJ’s Disruption Week press release.

We will not allow transnational scammers or the Chinese organized crime groups behind them to use America’s internet infrastructure against us or let U.S. companies stand idly by. Disruption Week shows what is possible when governments and private industry focus their efforts in tandem: millions of scam accounts interrupted, and criminal networks pushed off the U.S. internet platforms on which they rely.

Jeanine Ferris Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, made that statement in the June 3 announcement. The Strike Force carries founding partners across the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C., the DOJ’s Criminal Division, the FBI, and the U.S. Secret Service, with three additional U.S. Attorney’s offices having since joined. FBI Director Kash Patel was direct in the same release: “If you target Americans, we will find you, disrupt your network, and bring every available tool of the federal government down on you.”

Five foreign law enforcement bodies attended: the Australian Federal Police, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, New Zealand Police, the Royal Thai Police, and the U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA). The 63 Thai arrests came directly from intelligence shared during the Washington meetings.

The Compounds Behind the Accounts

The fraud the disrupted accounts were running is known as pig butchering, a translation of the Chinese sha zhu pan. Operatives pose as romantic partners or investment contacts over weeks or months through social media, dating apps, and messaging platforms. They introduce a fraudulent cryptocurrency trading platform that generates apparent early returns before it stops responding and the money is gone. These schemes often run for months, with operators encouraging deposits to grow before the exit; the FBI’s IC3 has documented individual losses routinely reaching six figures, with some victims reporting more than $1 million lost in a single scheme.

The operations behind these scams run from physical compounds across Burma, Cambodia, and Laos. Chinese organized crime syndicates recruit workers by advertising high-paying technical jobs in Thailand, seize identity documents on arrival, and transport workers across borders into scam facilities. Inside, workers run fraud operations against American and international victims under threat of violence. Survivor accounts and public reporting have documented beatings, electrocutions, and deaths in the compounds. An estimated 220,000 people are held in forced labor across Cambodia and Burma scam centers alone, trafficked from 66 countries.

In April 2026, the DOJ charged two Chinese nationals for managing the Shunda compound in Burma, where trafficked workers were beaten and forced to steal from Americans. Federal prosecutors also seized a Telegram channel with more than 6,000 followers used to recruit workers under false employment promises, and took down 503 fake cryptocurrency investment websites as part of that earlier crackdown on Southeast Asian scam networks.

In the same month, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC, the U.S. sanctions authority) designated Cambodian Senator Kok An, along with 28 other individuals and entities, for facilitating compound operations. OFAC found that Kok An’s casino and real-estate properties in Poipet and Sihanoukville had been converted to serve as scam centers; he allegedly collected rental income from criminal networks inside them and used casino operations to launder proceeds.

Meta’s Third Round in Six Months

June’s operation was the company’s third joint action with the DOJ since December 2025. The scale has grown with each round.

Across all three, the company reports removing more than 1.6 million scam accounts, pages, and groups from Facebook and Instagram, and says intelligence it provided helped lead to 84 total Royal Thai Police arrests, including the 63 from the most recent round.

The jump from March to June, roughly nine times the volume of accounts removed, reflects both better targeting as intelligence-sharing matured and an expanded company pool. Apple and Google joined the third operation; neither appeared in the earlier rounds’ participant lists.

President Trump signed an executive order on March 6, 2026, directing agencies to use “every available tool” against foreign-backed criminal networks exploiting Americans through cyber-enabled fraud. The DOJ’s Criminal Division sent A. Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general for criminal matters, to the Washington sessions, and the DOJ positioned the results as a direct execution of that order.

$3.8 Million Against an $11 Billion Problem

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3, the bureau’s online fraud reporting system) recorded $11.37 billion in cryptocurrency scam losses for American victims in 2025, up 22% from the prior year. People aged 60 and older accounted for $4.35 billion of those losses, roughly 38% of the total. Elder fraud across all internet crime categories jumped 59% in a single year, per the IC3’s 2025 annual report.

• $11.37 billion lost by Americans to cryptocurrency scams in 2025 (FBI IC3 2025 Annual Report), up 22% year-over-year
• $4.35 billion of those losses fell on victims aged 60 and older
• 8,935 victims notified by the FBI’s Operation Level Up program since January 2024; 77% were unaware they were being scammed when contacted
• $562.7 million in estimated savings for victims who would have sent more money without the FBI intervention

Chainalysis, whose analytics work supported the fraud investigations through participant TRM Labs, put the global picture higher. Its January 2026 Crypto Crime Report estimated crypto scams generated more than $17 billion in losses worldwide in 2025. The gap between that figure and the FBI’s $11.37 billion for Americans specifically reflects both the international scope and the documented underreporting problem; only a fraction of victims file a complaint, partly from shame.

Singapore’s Anti-Scam Centre ran a parallel exchange-cooperation effort between April 16 and May 31, working with Coinbase, OKX, Gemini, and other platforms. The Singapore Police Force reported on June 2 that the operation identified 145 potential victims and intercepted an estimated $4.2 million in losses, adding to a prior round that had prevented $2.86 million between March and April.

The FBI’s proactive victim-notification program, Operation Level Up, has run the domestic version of that approach since January 2024. Agents identify active scam victims and contact them before more money moves. As of March 2026, the program had reached 8,935 people; 77% were unaware they were being scammed when contacted. Its estimated victim savings stand at $562.7 million. Ninety-three people were referred to an FBI specialist for suicide intervention.

Some victims were already liquidating 401(k) accounts or selling homes before the FBI reached them. One person on disability pay had sent $1,200 and was preparing to divert food money toward the scammers when the call came in.

Decentralized Finance and the Freeze Gap

The coordination model depends on centralized platforms. All nine participating companies operate identifiable accounts, enforceable terms of service, and compliance teams that a DOJ targeting packet can reach. Chinese-language money laundering networks (CMLNs, informal cryptocurrency-moving services operating outside regulated venues) have none of those properties, and blockchain-tracing data shows their share of scam-related laundering is growing.

Chainalysis tracked CMLN activity at an estimated $16.1 billion in 2025, across more than 1,799 active wallets, accounting for approximately 20% of all monitored illicit laundering volume, per its January 2026 Crypto Crime Report. The firm tied part of the growth directly to exchange enforcement: its data showed a steady decline in CMLNs’ use of centralized exchanges, “potentially because exchanges can freeze funds.”

The FBI IC3’s 2025 annual report recorded $893 million in AI-powered scam losses across 22,364 complaints, driven by deepfake voice cloning and AI-generated personas running pig butchering schemes. Specialized services now sell synthetic identity documents and deepfake video footage to help fraud operations pass know-your-customer (KYC) verification at regulated exchanges.

The DOJ’s April 2026 operation, which restrained over $700 million in cryptocurrency tied to scam-network laundering, used U.S. legal process and voluntary cooperation from centralized exchanges. Peer-to-peer markets, DeFi (decentralized finance) bridges, and DEXs (decentralized exchanges, which clear trades without a central operator) have no compliance infrastructure to receive such process, and no terms of service to enforce.

Prosecution cases arising from the operation’s referrals to U.S. authorities are expected to take months to surface in public court records. A date for the next joint operation has not been announced.