DOJ's Scam Center Strike Force arrests 276 in global pig-butchering takedown

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center documented a 24-percent jump in cryptocurrency investment fraud losses in 2025, reaching $7.2 billion — up from $5.8 billion in 2024 and $3.96 billion in 2023. Researchers estimate the real annual figure may exceed $10 billion once unreported losses are counted. The dominant scheme driving those numbers is known as pig butchering, from the Chinese shāzhūpán: scammers cultivate targets over weeks or months through dating apps, social media, or seemingly accidental text messages, build trust, then introduce a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platform. Victims watch fabricated returns grow on the platform until they've deposited everything they can, at which point the scammer vanishes with the funds.

The fraud also depends on trafficked labor. Criminal syndicates in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand lure workers — primarily from China and Southeast Asian countries — with advertisements for high-paying technical jobs. When workers arrive, their passports and phones are seized and they're transported to scam compounds where they're forced to run fraud operations against Americans under threat of violence. Those who fail to meet daily quotas get beaten or sold to neighboring compounds. The U.S. State Department and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime have documented the practice extensively. Every pig-butchering call to an American victim may originate from a person who is also a victim, held against their will.

The Department of Justice launched the Scam Center Strike Force in November 2025 to pursue the criminal leadership networks behind the largest overseas compounds — not the foot soldiers. U.S. Attorney JFJeanine Ferris Pirro of the 🏛️District of Columbia and Assistant Attorney General ATA. Tysen Duva of the Criminal Division built the Strike Force to combine the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, and international law enforcement. The targeting philosophy was deliberate: prior enforcement actions had arrested low-level scam workers while the managers and compound operators continued operations without interruption.

On April 29, 2026, the Scam Center Strike Force announced the largest coordinated takedown of pig-butchering operations to date. At least 276 people were arrested across multiple countries. Nine scam centers were dismantled. Federal prosecutors seized approximately $580 million in cryptocurrency, took down 503 fake cryptocurrency investment websites, and restrained more than $700 million in assets tied to scam-related money laundering. The enforcement action was led by the FBI's San Diego field office, which had pioneered Operation Level Up in 2024 as a joint initiative with the Phoenix FBI office.

Three criminal networks operating in Burma sat at the center of the charges: the Ko Thet Company, the Sanduo Group, and the Giant Company. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of 🌴California charged six defendants. TMThet Min Nyi, 27, a Burmese national, and WAWiliang Awang, 23, an Indonesian national, faced wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy charges stemming from a March 2026 federal grand jury indictment. Awang was apprehended in Thailand by the Royal Thai Police's immigration bureau after attempting to flee through Bangkok. ACAndreas Chandra, 29, and LMLisa Mariam, 29, both Indonesian nationals, were also charged, along with two fugitive co-defendants who remain at large.

The international coordination was broader than any previous cyber fraud operation. Dubai's police department arrested 275 people in coordination with U.S. federal authorities — nearly the entire non-American arrest total. China's Ministry of Public Security participated in parallel operations targeting networks with Chinese organized crime affiliates. Thailand's Royal Thai Police provided both immigration enforcement and its dedicated Anti Cyber Scam Center. No comparable multi-jurisdiction crypto fraud operation had reached this scale before April 2026.

Operation Level Up, the FBI's proactive victim notification initiative, ran alongside the enforcement action. Since 2024, FBI agents have reached out directly to Americans who appeared to be actively engaged with fraudulent platforms — before those victims realized they were being scammed. By April 2026, the program had contacted 8,935 victims. Of those, 77 percent were completely unaware they were being defrauded at the time of contact. The estimated savings: $562 million that would otherwise have been transferred to scammers. One victim cited in court filings was an elderly man on disability pay who had already sent $1,200 and was planning to cut his food budget to send more when agents intervened.

Civil liberties researchers have noted that proactively identifying pig-butchering victims before they report themselves requires monitoring financial transaction patterns, cryptocurrency wallet activity, and platform communications at scale. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has observed that infrastructure capable of detecting fraud can also function as broad financial surveillance infrastructure. The DOJ has not publicly detailed which data sources it uses to identify victims before they self-report, and no independent oversight mechanism audits the program's data collection practices.

The jurisdiction problem remains unresolved. The three Burmese compound networks operated from a country whose military government, which seized power in a 2021 coup, has historically resisted U.S. extradition requests and international legal cooperation. Indicting defendants in San Diego while the actual compound infrastructure runs from Yangon creates a gap that even unprecedented international partnerships can close only partially. The two fugitive co-defendants in the Southern District of 🌴California case remained at large as of the announcement, in countries where U.S. reach is limited.