A joint international law enforcement and industry operation against scammers netted 28 arrests, rescued 117 trafficking victims and led to the takedown of more than 3.7 million accounts, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

The crackdown, billed as “Joint Disruption Week,” focused on West Africa and also identified more than $11 million in freezable funds and led to the seizure of hundreds of electronic devices. The range of scams involved included law enforcement impersonation scams, digital arrest extortion schemes, pig butchering and other online fraud operations targeting victims around the world.

Participants heralded it as the largest joint scam operation to date, and the first focused on West Africa.

“For so long, the problem of international scams seemed impossible to tackle,” Kelly Milliron, acting chief of staff and counselor to the Assistant Attorney General leading the Criminal Division, told reporters. “But now, because of collaborations like Joint Disruption Week, we have a plan, a consolidated approach, bringing together people that can bring solutions and, most of all, safety for our citizens.”

It’s the latest effort in the Trump administration’s ongoing bid to make countering scam operations a theme of his term, and to make disrupting cyber adversaries and criminals a central focus of its cyber strategy. 

Participating agencies in the London-hosted operation beyond the Justice Department were 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, Homeland Security Investigations, the Homeland Security Task Force, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, the Nigerian Joint Case Team on Cybercrimes, the Nigeria Police Force’s National Cybercrime Center and the Ghanaian Cyber Security Authority, INTERPOL and agencies from Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand also were involved. 

Adobe, Binance, Coinbase, Cyjax, Elliptic, Chainalysis, Flashpoint, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Silent Push, Starlink and TRM Labs were companies that participated in the operation. Meta said it removed more than 3.7 million accounts, groups and pages from Facebook and Instagram based in West Africa, a majority of which targeted people in the United States and United Kingdom.

Some on Capitol Hill have raised concerns about whether U.S. operations to counter scams are coordinated enough.

The operation actually began in September, with a series of raids in Ghana before last week’s designated action. Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said Disruption Week occurred not long after a new partnership with the United Kingdom.

“The aim is to bring cases in parallel and also to combat fraud together through joint targeting,” she said. “This was the perfect time to continue that partnership.”

It’s not clear how many of the potentially freezable funds will actually be frozen as a result of the operation.

“Identifying the assets is the easy part, and tracing them, going after and developing probable cause within our investigations so that we can legally seize them does require a little bit of work,” said Matthew Floyd, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. “So at this point, that’s why it’s much easier in these efforts to identify assets initially, and then they’ll fold into our investigations as we move forward.”

Disruption Week was the culmination of agencies meeting to combine forces, something that will happen on a regular basis, Floyd said, but at an interval to be determined going forward. The operation led to the sharing of more than 30 leads on scam centers, participants said.

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An international law enforcement operation carried out against organized crime groups in West Africa resulted in 58 arrests and identified 263 suspects, Interpol announced Tuesday.

The operation, known as Operation Jackal IV, aimed to disrupt money laundering, locate high-value targets, seize assets and support prosecutions tied to various Africa-based criminal groups, including Black Axe. 

Black Axe is a highly structured, hierarchical group that generates billions of dollars in criminal proceeds annually from many small-scale operations spanning dozens of countries. The group’s leaders are Nigerian nationals, according to a Europol release issued earlier this year. In January, European law enforcement arrested dozens of the group’s members for adversary-in-the-middle scams such as business email compromise, money laundering and vehicle trafficking. 

“Operation Jackal IV demonstrates the power of international cooperation,” Tomonobu Kaya, director of Interpol’s Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre, said in a release. “By following illicit financial flows across borders, we are attacking the very lifeblood of organized crime and making it increasingly difficult for criminal networks to profit from their activities.”

The agency said it will continue to work to unravel the full details of each case, but detailed several preliminary discoveries from partner organizations Tuesday.

Romanian authorities broke up a group that ran an investment scam from a call center promising high returns in stocks or cryptocurrencies. Victim payments were routed to electronic wallets controlled by the operators, with police estimating the full value at 143 million euros (approximately $166 million). They arrested 11 people and seized about 330,000 euros ($379,000) in cash and cryptocurrency, six properties and several luxury watches.

In South Africa, where 39 of the 58 arrests occurred, police raided seven sites in Johannesburg tied to a syndicate that targeted retirees in English-speaking countries with romance and investment scams. Investigators seized $2.67 million and blocked 257 bank accounts.

Authorities in Argentina identified 196 people linked to a Crime-as-a-Service network suspected of supplying website domains and laundering support to West African groups, making 17 arrests. 

In Italy, one person was identified in connection with a pan-European laundering network built on shell companies, remittance services and cash withdrawals. A single account moved 845,000 euros ($736,000) through 560 transactions.

Investigators also noted the group’s growing focus on sextortion, with victims as young as 14. Similar to actions taken by The Com, Interpol says offenders are contacting teenagers on social media, coercing them into taking explicit images, then demanding payment to keep the material private.

This is not the first time Interpol has taken measures to disrupt African-based groups. In 2024, a similar Interpol operation led to 300 arrests, $3 million in assets seized and 720 blocked bank accounts.

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Authorities arrested more than 5,800 alleged cybercriminals and seized $293 million in a global operation targeting social-engineering scams and money laundering across 97 countries, Interpol said Thursday.

The anti-fraud crackdown, dubbed Operation First Light, identified more than 142,000 victims, including people, businesses and governments, officials said. 

“Social engineering scams continue to pose a significant threat to our society. Criminal syndicates exploit human psychology to manipulate their targets, and no nation can stay safe unless all countries are equipped and committed to jointly fighting back,” Tomonobu Kaya, director of Interpol’s Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre, said in a statement.

Police identified more than 15,500 cybercrime suspects during the operation, which spanned more than three months ending in late April, according to Interpol. Officials also analyzed more than 152,800 cases of cybercrime, including business email compromise, sextortion, romance scams, impersonation and investment schemes. 

Interpol said nearly 24,000 cases of cybercrime were solved and investigators blocked more than 31,000 bank accounts linked to malicious activity during the crackdown.

Authorities involved in the globally coordinated operation seized a high volume of devices and other equipment used to allegedly facilitate cybercrime. 

In Eswatini, police seized a replica of a Brazilian police station, including fake uniforms, signage and equipment that cybercriminals allegedly used to deceive targets into thinking they were victims of a crime, duping them into transferring funds.

While uncovering a romance scam money laundering operation in Thailand, investigators identified a 20-year-old suspect that allegedly processed more than $122.5 million in 10 months, according to Interpol. Officials in Palau identified and deported 22 people allegedly involved in a pair of scam centers operating from hotels.

“Interpol is dedicated to supporting member countries in building a comprehensive, coordinated strategy to tackle cyber-enabled financial crimes, organized criminal networks and the money laundering that fuels them,” Kaya said.

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