U.S. AND UNITED KINGDOM FORM JOINT ALLIANCE TO DISMANTLE GLOBAL SCAM CENTERS

WASHINGTON — The United States and United Kingdom have signed a new memorandum of understanding to coordinate investigations, prosecutions, information sharing, and disruption operations against overseas scam centers responsible for large-scale cryptocurrency investment fraud, romance scams, money laundering, human trafficking, and related cyber-enabled crime.

The agreement brings together the U.S. Department of Justice’s Scam Center Strike Force, the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales, and the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency in what the Justice Department described as a first-of-its-kind international framework focused specifically on dismantling scam-center operations.

The initiative targets criminal organizations operating industrial-scale scam compounds, many of them in Southeast Asia, where victims around the world are manipulated into sending money through cryptocurrency investment fraud, relationship-based scams, impersonation schemes, and other confidence fraud.

According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, cyber-enabled fraud schemes accounted for nearly 85 percent of all reported losses in 2025. Investment fraud generated approximately $8.65 billion in reported losses, while cryptocurrency investment fraud accounted for more than $7.2 billion. Federal authorities caution that reported figures may significantly understate actual losses because many victims never report the crimes.

The new U.S.-U.K. agreement is designed to move beyond information sharing alone.

Under the memorandum, prosecutors and investigators will coordinate parallel investigations, determine which jurisdiction is best positioned to bring specific cases, prioritize overlapping targets, and pursue disruption efforts intended to affect the criminal networks on multiple fronts at the same time.

Federal authorities said U.S. and British agencies had already identified significant overlap in active cases before signing the agreement.

The two countries also committed to conducting an in-person disruption event in London in early October, hosted by the National Crime Agency and involving private-sector partners. The objective is to combine government investigative authorities with information and infrastructure held by technology, financial, telecommunications, and other companies that can help disable scam operations.

The agreement represents an expansion of the strategy already being used by the Scam Center Strike Force inside the United States.

The Strike Force was formally launched in November 2025 by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro for the District of Columbia to target Chinese transnational criminal organizations operating scam compounds primarily in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and other parts of Southeast Asia.

The task force combines personnel and authorities from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, FBI, U.S. Secret Service, Justice Department Criminal Division, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, IRS Criminal Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and other federal partners.

It also works with the Departments of Treasury, State, and Commerce and has increasingly relied on private-sector cooperation to remove accounts, freeze cryptocurrency, identify infrastructure, and trace criminal proceeds.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen P. Seifert directs the Strike Force.

Its focus is not limited to financial fraud.

Federal authorities have repeatedly documented links between scam centers and human trafficking, with workers recruited or transported into compounds and forced to carry out fraud under threats, confinement, violence, or other coercion.

The scam compounds can operate as integrated criminal businesses combining fraud, money laundering, cryptocurrency transfers, labor exploitation, identity abuse, telecommunications infrastructure, and organized crime.

The United Kingdom has separately described these centers as part of a rapidly expanding transnational fraud problem involving sophisticated criminal networks that exploit global communications platforms, financial systems, and digital services.

The new bilateral framework also builds on enforcement actions already taken jointly by Washington and London.

In October 2025, the United States and United Kingdom imposed coordinated sanctions against a major Southeast Asian online-fraud network associated with scam-center operations. British authorities said the network used trafficked workers who were forced to carry out fraud, including schemes that cultivated fake romantic relationships with victims.

The broader U.S. enforcement campaign has since produced major criminal, financial, and infrastructure disruptions.

In April 2026, the Scam Center Strike Force announced charges against two Chinese nationals accused of managing a cryptocurrency investment fraud compound in Burma and attempting to establish another operation in Cambodia.

That same enforcement action included the seizure of a Telegram channel allegedly used to recruit trafficking victims and the seizure of 503 fraudulent investment websites. Authorities also restrained approximately $700 million in cryptocurrency linked to scam-center activity.

In June, the Justice Department announced the results of a separate Disruption Week that brought federal agencies together with private companies.

During that operation, companies voluntarily disabled millions of social-media, email, and internet-access accounts associated with Southeast Asian scam activity, while information shared by the government helped private-sector entities freeze more than $3.8 million in cryptocurrency linked to laundering operations.

By July 2026, federal authorities said the Scam Center Strike Force had recovered more than $800 million connected to international scam activity.

The U.S.-U.K. memorandum is intended to expand that disruption model across national borders.

One central challenge in scam-center investigations is jurisdiction.

Victims may be located in the United States or United Kingdom, servers may be hosted in another country, cryptocurrency may move through multiple exchanges, money mules may operate elsewhere, and the scam compound itself may be located in Southeast Asia.

The criminal organization can therefore operate across several legal systems at the same time.

The new agreement allows prosecutors and investigators to determine which country has the strongest basis to pursue a particular defendant, asset, infrastructure target, or criminal organization while coordinating related cases rather than duplicating efforts.

That structure can also increase pressure on the same organization from several directions at once.

A criminal network may face asset seizures in one jurisdiction, sanctions in another, arrests elsewhere, account shutdowns by technology companies, cryptocurrency freezes by exchanges, infrastructure seizures, and prosecution of individual organizers.

The Justice Department said the Strike Force is specifically targeting Chinese organized crime syndicates believed to be operating or financing many of the most significant scam compounds in Southeast Asia.

Pirro said the goal of the partnership is to disable those organizations rather than simply prosecute isolated fraud cases after victims have already lost their money.

The strategy therefore emphasizes prevention and disruption alongside prosecution.

Private-sector participation is a critical part of that approach because scam operations depend heavily on commercial infrastructure, including social-media accounts, messaging applications, web hosting, domain registrations, telecommunications services, cryptocurrency exchanges, digital wallets, advertising systems, and payment channels.

When those services can be identified and disabled quickly, investigators can disrupt scam operations before every underlying criminal actor is arrested.

The problem remains substantial.

Federal authorities estimate scam-center operations are costing American victims approximately $10 billion annually, and reported figures likely capture only part of the actual losses.

Victims can lose retirement savings, business funds, home equity, cryptocurrency holdings, or entire personal savings accounts after being manipulated over periods of weeks or months.

The psychological component can be as damaging as the financial loss.

Investment and romance scams often rely on sustained relationship-building, manufactured trust, and carefully controlled communications before victims are persuaded to transfer money.

The perpetrators may then use fake investment dashboards, fabricated returns, staged customer-service interactions, or additional fee demands to keep victims sending funds after the original fraud has begun.

The people conducting those conversations may themselves be victims.

U.S. and British authorities have documented scam centers where trafficked workers are confined and forced to participate in fraud under coercive conditions.

That makes the enforcement problem more complex than conventional cybercrime because investigators must distinguish criminal organizers, financial facilitators, infrastructure providers, willing participants, and trafficking victims compelled to conduct fraudulent communications.

The memorandum signed September 3 signals that the United States and United Kingdom intend to treat scam centers as a transnational organized-crime problem rather than as isolated online fraud incidents.

The first major test of the new partnership will come with the planned London disruption operation in October, where investigators, prosecutors, and private-sector partners are expected to coordinate actions against overlapping targets.

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