Authorities arrested seven people allegedly involved in an investment fraud scheme that claimed potential victims in more than 50 countries, Europol said Tuesday. Officials said the operation caused estimated losses of at least $4.5 million. 

The takedown effort involved searches across 17 countries Tuesday and netted the seizure of more than 100 servers, according to Europol.

Officials targeted the scheme run by a company that allegedly provided cybercrime groups a series of trading websites and an assortment of call centers tasked with tricking victims into transferring their savings. 

The company, operated from Cyprus and Israel, was linked to call centers in Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia, officials said. 

“The scheme promised substantial, quick returns from trading in cryptocurrencies, foreign currencies or stocks,” Europol wrote in a news release. “Behind seemingly legitimate platforms, supposed brokers used fictitious profits and sustained psychological pressure to persuade victims to invest more.”

The investment scam’s operators used affiliate marketing to target potential victims with advertisements that led them to fraudulent investment platforms. Cybercrime groups running the call centers purchased data collected through those ads to contact potential victims, officials said.

Operators duped victims by displaying fictitious profits and pressured victims to transfer large sums of money. “When victims asked to withdraw their money, the operators used delaying tactics to block payments. Eventually, contact ceased, leaving victims unable to recover their funds,” Europol wrote. 

Authorities were tipped off to the investment scam in 2022 when a German couple reported they couldn’t withdraw funds invested in an online trading platform. Authorities arrested two people allegedly involved in the scheme that year and seized evidence that eventually led to further arrests and seizures in 2025.

The joint investigation and takedown effort was supported by officials in Albania, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Israel, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Poland. The seven people arrested Tuesday, who were not identified, are facing extradition to Germany to face charges, Europol said.

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A 44-year-old Chinese national was extradited to the United States and arraigned in federal court for his alleged involvement in a sweeping investment scam network that tricked at least 174 U.S. residents out of nearly $37 million, the Justice Department said Friday. 

Zheng Zhao was extradited from the Netherlands to the United States to face a conspiracy to commit money laundering charge that could keep him in prison for 20 years. 

Prosecutors accuse Zhao and his co-conspirators of operating a global cryptocurrency investment scheme out of multiple countries, including scam centers in Cambodia. 

The cybercrime ring allegedly reached out to U.S.-based victims proactively via social media, phone calls, text messages and online dating sites to establish a deceitful relationship and build trust. Eventually, Zhao and his co-conspirators promoted cryptocurrency investments to the victims and directed them to send funds through fake sites that resembled legitimate trading platforms.

Victims were told their investments were growing in value, yet they were already transferred from U.S. bank accounts controlled by the co-conspirators to an account at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, officials said. The crew allegedly converted the victim funds to Tether before transferring the assets to a digital wallet controlled in Cambodia.

The stolen funds were ultimately distributed to leaders of scam networks throughout the region, officials said.

Eight of Zhao’s co-conspirators previously pleaded guilty participating in the investment scam conspiracy, including Shengsheng He and Jingliang Su, who were sentenced to 51 months and 46 months in prison, respectively. 

Joseph Wong, a co-conspirator living in California, managed a network of money launderers in Los Angeles who registered shell companies, opened U.S. bank accounts and transferred stolen victim funds to international bank accounts.

“This case should serve as a warning to scammers in every corner of the world: there is nowhere to hide,” Todd Bratz, special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service Criminal Investigation Division, said in a statement. “Secret Service investigators and our law enforcement partners remain unwavering in their commitment to identify those who operate scam centers, disrupt their financial infrastructure and bring them to justice.”

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A 40-year-old Nigerian national was sentenced to eight years in prison for running a years-long hacking, tax fraud and investment scheme, the Justice Department said Monday.

Chukwuemeka Victor Amachukwu enriched himself from 2019 to 2023 by hacking into U.S.-based tax preparation businesses, filing false tax returns with federal and state authorities using identities stolen from victim organizations and enticing victims to send him money for investments that did not exist, according to court records.

Amachukwu pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud in April. He was arrested in France in July 2023 and extradited to the United States in August 2025.

“Chukwuemeka Amachukwu believed he was operating safely offshore when he targeted his victims, but he has now been held to account and now faces a serious sentence for his crimes,” Jamie McDonald, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. 

“Amachukwu took part in sophisticated schemes to hack into U.S. businesses, steal and use stolen identity information of victims, and commit fraud,” McDonald added. “These crimes imposed significant harm on the victims and the public, and so it is only appropriate that the crimes also come with a significant sentence for the defendant.”

The financial penalties imposed on Amachukwu for his crimes accentuate the damage he inflicted at scale. A federal judge ordered him to pay nearly $3.65 million in restitution to his many victims and forfeit almost $10.85 million.

Prosecutors said Amachukwu and his alleged co-conspirators obtained more than $7 million in fraudulent investment schemes, about $2.5 million in fraudulent tax returns and $819,000 in fraudulent payouts from the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. 

Amachukwu, his alleged co-conspirator Kingsley Uchelue Utulu and other alleged Nigeria-based co-conspirators also stole the tax and personal data of at least 800 business customers after hacking into tax businesses based in New York, Texas and elsewhere, according to court records.

In one of those attacks, in May 2021, members of the conspiracy sent a spearfishing email to an employee of a New York-based tax preparation business, which infected the firm’s computer systems with malware.

The FBI, Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs and the U.S. Marshals Service assisted the investigation, which led to Amachukwu’s arrest and extradition from France.

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The State Department will restrict visas for cybercriminals like scammers to sextortionists, and in some cases even their family members, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday.

The Trump administration has sought to make a crackdown on foreign-based scams one of the signature issues of his second term. An executive order that the president signed in March indicated that visa restrictions would be on the table as one response.

“By restricting visa issuance to those who are responsible for or complicit in these criminal enterprises, we are sending a clear message: The United States will go after those who prey on our citizens,” Rubio said.

Other departments have also made efforts to reduce foreign-run scams. In June, the Department of Justice seized infrastructure used by subsidiaries of the Huione Group, a Cambodia-based corporate conglomerate tied to one of the world’s most prolific criminal marketplaces used to commit cyber scams and other crimes.

Rubio authorized the visa restrictions under a 1952 law that gives the State Department the ability to deport or rule as inadmissible someone who poses “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

Critics have accused the Trump administration of abusing that provision of the law for political purposes.

Rubio’s statement on the visa restrictions mentions “individuals responsible for, or complicit in, cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime, such as those involved in cyberscams, and sextortion.”  Furthermore, he said, “Immediate family members of individuals engaged in such illicit activities may also be subjected to visa restrictions.”

Betsy Cooper, Founding Director of the Aspen Policy Academy, said the visa restrictions on cybercriminals could be valuable, but offered a caveat.

“Scamming people is a growing global enterprise, and it is a laudable goal to penalize those who scam and defraud people since they so rarely suffer consequences for their actions,” she said in a statement to CyberScoop. “So long as the new visa controls are used narrowly and deployed only against verified scammers and fraudsters, this is a positive step toward combatting cyber-enabled crime.”

While some cyber experts have questioned how much visa restrictions, prosecutions and other punishments of cyber miscreants who are based overseas will affect them, others maintain that it can serve as a deterrent to those who would consider getting into the line of work but want freedom to travel the globe.

FightCyberCrime.org, a nonprofit that seeks to help cybercrime victims, applauded the restrictions on the cybercriminals.

“We welcome efforts to hold cybercriminals accountable across borders. Cryptocurrency investment scams, romance scams, and sextortion cause devastating financial and emotional harm to victims,” it said in a statement to CyberScoop. “Meaningful disruption of these transnational criminal networks is an essential part of the response.”

But there’s still a long way to go in the fight, the statement continued.

“At the same time, we must invest more in victim support, prevention, and recovery resources,” the organization said. “Accountability is critical, but ensuring victims have access to trauma-informed support and resources is equally important.”

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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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