Jeanine Pirro’s Scam Center Strike Force just marked its first year with numbers that should get the attention of every American who has watched online criminals target savings accounts, retirement money, and vulnerable family members.

The Justice Department operation says it has restrained more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency, helped deplatform more than 17 million scam accounts, seized tens of thousands of devices, and taken down 700 scam websites since Pirro launched the force one year ago.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington posted the anniversary totals Friday and made clear that the operation is still expanding.

Those numbers describe far more than annoying spam messages. Federal investigators say transnational criminal organizations have built industrial-scale operations that use fake romances, fraudulent investments, impersonation, and cryptocurrency laundering to drain Americans’ life savings.

The Scam Center Strike Force combines Pirro’s office with the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, the FBI, and the Secret Service. It also works with the State Department, Treasury, Commerce, foreign law enforcement, and private companies that control the digital infrastructure scammers exploit.

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Its mission is to identify the leaders behind scam compounds, seize stolen cryptocurrency, disable the websites and accounts used to reach victims, and return money when the law permits. The operation has focused heavily on Chinese organized-crime affiliates working through compounds in Southeast Asia, where trafficking victims are sometimes forced to carry out fraud under threat and abuse.

The strike force is also following those networks as they spread. In late October, prosecutors announced charges against six Africa-based defendants accused of running fake NFT investment schemes tied to operations with connections to Southeast Asia and China.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said that case grew from work in Madagascar, where investigators traced scam compounds that had reportedly shifted locations after law-enforcement pressure in Asia. Pirro said the force had expanded its personnel and global reach because the criminal organizations were moving into Africa and Europe.

Investigators alleged that the defendants used fake NFT platforms and manipulated victims into believing their accounts were earning profits. When victims tried to withdraw their money, the scammers demanded additional taxes or fees, extending the theft instead of releasing the funds.

The government’s response is now becoming more international. Pirro announced a new memorandum with Singapore’s Second Minister for Foreign and Home Affairs, Sim Ann, aimed at online scams, cyber fraud, and money laundering.

That agreement is a practical recognition of how these crimes work. The victim may be in Ohio or Florida, the scammer may be operating from a guarded compound overseas, the fake account may sit on an American platform, and the stolen money may race through wallets and exchanges in several countries.

No single local police department can dismantle that chain by itself. Investigators need fast cooperation across borders, platforms, banks, and cryptocurrency services before the money disappears.

The FBI’s Cyber Branch is pushing the same cross-border strategy. Its operations director used a new briefing on international law-enforcement partnerships to explain why agencies must evolve as sophisticated cybercriminals operate across national boundaries.

The scale of the first-year results shows what aggressive enforcement can do when prosecutors stop treating each scam as an isolated complaint and attack the organizations, infrastructure, and money flows behind it.

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More than $1 billion restrained is a major start. So are 17 million disabled accounts and 700 seized websites.

But the most important sentence in the anniversary message may be the last one: the strike force says it is just getting started.

For the criminal syndicates hunting American victims, that is exactly the message they need to hear.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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