FBI’s Operation Blackout Dismantles Scammers Operating Overseas Targeting Americans

The FBI has dismantled overseas scam compounds accused of stealing Americans’ savings through cryptocurrency investment fraud, romance schemes, impersonation scams, and other cyber-enabled operations.

Under Operation Blackout, authorities have seized or restrained roughly $17 billion, arrested hundreds of suspects and freed thousands of trafficked workers forced to conduct fraud from industrial-scale facilities in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

FBI Director Kash Patel described the sites as purpose-built “towns” and “cities” where criminal syndicates confine workers and direct them to contact targets through social media, phone calls, text messages and Telegram.

Unlike conventional call centers, these compounds combine human trafficking, scripted social engineering, digital payment infrastructure, and organized money laundering, allowing operators to reach victims worldwide while remaining beyond US borders.

The fraud chain commonly begins with an unsolicited message or apparently accidental contact. Operators cultivate trust, sometimes through a fabricated romantic relationship, before steering victims toward counterfeit cryptocurrency platforms displaying manipulated profits.

Once larger deposits arrive, operators block withdrawals, demand additional “taxes” or fees, and move stolen funds through wallets and laundering services. The Justice Department previously alleged that Cambodia’s Prince Group used forced-labor compounds for such schemes; US authorities took custody of approximately 127,271 Bitcoin valued at about $15 billion in the department’s largest forfeiture action.

Operation Blackout attacks several layers of that ecosystem simultaneously. Investigators work with foreign law-enforcement partners to raid physical compounds, seize computers and storage media, trace cryptocurrency, interrupt communications and pursue organizers.

During an August search of Cambodia’s roughly 200-acre O’Smach Resort compound, authorities searched 28 buildings and collected 113 hard drives, 15 computers and 35 boxes of evidence.

In Madagascar, a Justice Department Scam Center Strike Force deployment supported local authorities in dismantling 13 Chinese-run scam centers and processing more than 3,200 electronic devices.

The FBI is also intervening before payments become irreversible. Through Operation Level Up, its US-facing prevention component conducted with the Secret Service, investigators identify likely cryptocurrency-investment-fraud victims and contact them directly.

Officials said 10,406 people had been warned, 77 percent of whom did not realize they were being deceived. Those interventions reportedly prevented an estimated $660 million in losses, while authorities seized or froze an additional $122 million in cryptocurrency.

Digital disruption has accompanied the raids. The bureau reported seizing 584 scam websites and referring 7,670 fraudulent accounts to private-sector platforms for action.

It also referred 99 endangered victims for suicide intervention, underscoring the severe psychological damage associated with life-changing financial losses. The figures are significant against the FBI’s 2025 data, which recorded 61,559 cryptocurrency-investment complaints and approximately $7.23 billion in reported losses; victims aged 60 and older accounted for about $2.76 billion.

For potential victims, the immediate response remains critical: stop sending money, contact the financial institution, preserve messages, domains, phone numbers, wallet addresses and transaction hashes, and report the incident at IC3.gov.

Because cryptocurrency transfers can cross borders rapidly, early reporting can help investigators trace funds, notify exchanges and identify connected wallets before proceeds are dispersed through global laundering networks. The FBI warns against paying supposed recovery companies, which often target victims again.

Operation Blackout’s expansion into central and sub-Saharan Africa also signals that displacement is expected: shutting down one compound may redirect the network, but coordinated infrastructure seizures, financial tracing, and victim notification can make relocation costlier and expose the organizations behind the fraud.

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