DOJ's "Joint Disruption Week" Nets 28 Arrests, 3.7 Million Scam Accounts Removed, 117 Trafficking Victims Found
The Justice Department on October 13 announced the results of a law-enforcement and private-industry "Joint Disruption Week" targeting online scam accounts and transnational criminal networks operating in West Africa. The coordinated operation, beginning the week of October 6 and hosted by the UK's National Crime Agency in London, was the first to focus specifically on West African scam centers. The international coalition made 28 arrests, and private partners removed more than 3.7 million fraudulent social media accounts, Pages and Groups linked to scam centers in the region — the largest-ever takedown of its kind — while identifying more than $11 million in potentially freezable funds and sharing leads on over 30 suspected scam centers with law enforcement.
In Sasaabi, near Accra, Ghana, officers arrested 19 people, seized 303 electronic devices and found 117 human-trafficking victims awaiting repatriation to Nigeria, alongside 89 identified fraud victims who lost about $8.3 million. Nigeria saw 9 arrests and 53 devices seized. The disrupted schemes included law-enforcement impersonation scams, digital "arrest" extortion and cryptocurrency investment fraud — "pig butchering." Participants included the DOJ, the Scam Center Strike Force under the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Treasury Department and HSI, the UK's NCA, Nigerian and Ghanaian cybercrime authorities, law enforcement from Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand, and INTERPOL; private partners included Meta, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Adobe, Binance, Coinbase, Chainalysis, Elliptic, TRM Labs and Starlink. "Criminals beware," said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Criminal Division. "Transnational fraud demands a transnational response," said U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro, founder of the Scam Center Strike Force. FBI Director Kash Patel said the operation arrested dozens, seized hundreds of devices, identified at least $11 million in freezable funds and "truly saved lives."
The backdrop is stark: the FBI's IC3 recorded 72,984 investment-scam reports in 2025, with cryptocurrency investment fraud accounting for 72% of the category and reported crypto-related investment-fraud losses rising 24% in 2025 to more than $7.2 billion; a government report puts global scam theft at a conservative $64 billion a year.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice press release 26-1169, October 13, 2026.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：FBI总部J·埃德加·胡佛大楼（华盛顿）。摄影：Aude，CC BY-SA 3.0，来源：Wikimedia Commons
