At least 276 people are under arrest. Nine overseas fraud compounds have been shut down, and federal charges were unsealed in San Diego recently, the result of a coordinated international crackdown on cryptocurrency scam networks that spent years stealing millions from Americans, the Department of Justice announced.
These were not opportunists running a side hustle. Prosecutors described the compounds as structured criminal enterprises, complete with recruiters, managers, and layered operational systems, built specifically to target Americans at scale from thousands of miles away, counting on foreign borders to keep them safe.
The operation brought together the FBI, Dubai Police, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, and Thailand's Royal Thai Police in what officials called an unprecedented coordination effort. At the center of it were so-called "pig-butchering" scams, a tactic as calculated as the name suggests. Scammers would spend weeks posing as friends or romantic interests online, carefully building trust before introducing a can't-miss cryptocurrency investment opportunity. Victims were funneled to fake platforms with convincing dashboards showing steady gains that didn't exist. Once the money moved, it was gone, shuffled through accounts and pocketed before victims knew what had happened. Many were then pressured to borrow from family or take out loans to invest more, deepening losses they didn't yet know they had.
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Americans lost a record $15.9 billion to scams in 2025. Behind that number are seniors, working families, and people who trusted someone they believed cared about them, only to have their financial security quietly dismantled by foreign criminals.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of California unsealed charges against six defendants tied to three fraud organizations: "Ko Thet Company," "Sanduo Group," and "Giant Company." Among those charged are Thet Min Nyi, 27, a Burmese national, and Indonesian nationals Wiliang Awang, 23, Andreas Chandra, 29, and Lisa Mariam, 29. Two co-conspirators remain fugitives. If convicted, each defendant faces up to 20 years in federal prison. Fines vary by charge: up to $250,000 for wire fraud conspiracy and up to $500,000 for money laundering conspiracy.
The crackdown fits squarely within the Trump administration's posture on foreign-backed fraud. On March 6, President Trump signed an Executive Order directing his administration to prioritize cybercrime and predatory financial schemes, deploying every available tool against the foreign criminal networks behind them. This investigation falls under Executive Order 14159, formally titled "Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” which established the Homeland Security Task Force that helped drive the crackdown.
"These scammers thought they were safe half a world away," said U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon. "But their world has changed. Global crime now faces global justice."
The message from Washington was deliberate.
"Fraudsters who target Americans from overseas cannot operate with impunity, no matter where in the world they reside," Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said. "The charges and arrests announced today reflect an international consensus that scam centers are unwelcome everywhere and must be rooted out. In contemporary society, fraud is borderless, and law enforcement activity to combat it and eliminate it is as well."
This operation is part of a broader, ongoing push. The FBI's Operation Level Up, launched in 2024, has already notified nearly 9,000 victims and saved an estimated $562 million in losses as of April 2026. Separately, investigators are actively pursuing the Tai Chang Scam Enterprise, a network of fraud compounds in Burma's Karen State accused of running the same playbook against Americans.
Meta also played a role, handing investigators data that helped identify and track the networks. Worth noting: it did so under pressure, not out of sudden civic virtue. The company removed more than 159 million scam ads in 2025 and disabled more than 150,000 accounts connected to these operations.
Foreign criminals built an industry on the assumption that borders protect them and Americans are easy marks. This week, 276 of them found out otherwise.
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