A multinational anti-scam operation involving Meta, the FBI, the DOJ, Royal Thai Police, Microsoft, Coinbase and Starlink has led to 63 arrests, more than $3 million in frozen cryptocurrency and the removal of about 1.4 million scam-related accounts, pages and groups from Facebook and Instagram.
The two-week operation began on May 18 and targeted Southeast Asia-based scam networks accused of stealing from victims through romance scams, crypto investment fraud and other online schemes. The effort also involved the U.S. Secret Service and law enforcement agencies from the U.K., Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Thailand.
Royal Thai Police arrested 63 people allegedly connected to scam centers. Coinbase froze more than $3 million in crypto assets tied to criminal networks. Microsoft disabled roughly 20,000 accounts linked to scam operations, while Starlink disrupted thousands of internet terminals associated with the networks.
Scam Compounds Remain A Crypto Fraud Engine
The operation targeted the infrastructure behind industrial-scale fraud, not only individual scam accounts. Authorities have warned that many Southeast Asian scam centers operate from compounds tied to transnational organized crime groups. Some workers inside those compounds are trafficking victims forced to carry out online fraud, while enforcement efforts focus on alleged organizers, recruiters, money launderers and network operators.
Crypto remains central to many of these schemes because stolen funds can move quickly through wallets, exchanges, stablecoins and laundering routes. The same model appears in pig-butchering scams, fake investment dashboards, romance-fraud scripts and impersonation schemes designed to make victims send money voluntarily before the fraud becomes obvious.
The latest crackdown follows a series of global enforcement actions against crypto-enabled fraud. Argentina recently arrested 24 people in a fake investment-platform sweep, while fake hiring schemes are increasingly being used to deliver malware through crypto job interviews.
Platform Takedowns Scale Sharply
The account-removal numbers show how quickly scam infrastructure can grow across social platforms. Meta removed 59,000 scam assets during a December operation, 150,000 in March and 1.4 million in the latest crackdown. Across all three operations, more than 1.6 million scam accounts, pages and groups have been removed, with intelligence contributing to 84 arrests by Royal Thai Police.
That scale matters because scam networks rely on volume. They create fake identities, cloned brands, romance profiles, investment groups, fake support accounts and payment-routing channels faster than most victims can verify them. The removal of more than a million accounts cuts into that distribution layer, while crypto freezes hit the financial side of the operation.
The enforcement push also reinforces a basic user-risk lesson around social engineering in crypto. The blockchain is rarely the first point of failure in these cases. The attack usually starts with trust, urgency, fake identity and a polished story.
The crackdown gives investigators a stronger model for attacking scam networks at several points at once: social accounts, exchange-linked funds, communications infrastructure, internet access and physical operators. The next test is whether those removals and arrests can slow new scam compounds before they rebuild accounts, reroute payments and target another wave of victims.
