A sweeping international crackdown on crypto investment fraud has resulted in 276 arrests and the dismantling of nine scam centers in a joint operation led by Dubai Police with the US FBI and China’s Ministry of Public Security.
“The charges and arrests announced today reflect an international consensus that scam centers are unwelcome everywhere and must be rooted out,” US Assistant Attorney General Andrew Tysen Duva said in a statement. “In contemporary society, fraud is borderless, and law enforcement activity to combat it and eliminate it is as well.”
The operation targeted so-called “pig-butchering” scams, where criminals build trust with victims through fake online relationships before luring them into fraudulent crypto investments. Federal prosecutors in San Diego unsealed an indictment charging six defendants with federal fraud and money laundering, offenses that carry a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The fraudulent platforms included websites named CoinswiftTrading and SwiftLedger, according to the indictment.
This enforcement action signals a strategic shift to disrupt global fraud infrastructure directly, treating cyber-enabled financial crime as a transnational threat. The FBI has been ramping up efforts through initiatives like Operation Level Up, with US authorities recently restraining over $700 million in cryptocurrency linked to similar scam networks.
In a parallel effort, a police action involving Austrian and Albanian authorities, with support from Europol and Eurojust, shut down three scam centers in Tirana, Albania. The operation resulted in 10 arrests and targeted a network estimated to have stolen over 50 million euros ($58 million) from victims worldwide.
Europol revealed the significant scale of the Albanian operation, which employed up to 450 people across various departments. The structure included teams for customer acquisition, retention, IT, and management, highlighting the professional organization of these criminal enterprises.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
