DC Scam Center Strike Force Crypto Seizures, Freezes Hit $580M

Freezes and seizures cryptocurrency by the Scam Center Strike Force of Southeast Asian crime networks have surpassed the $580 million mark, according to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

In one announcement On Thursday, Jeanine Pirro said the force had made “significant progress” in freezing, seizing and confiscating cryptocurrencies from scam networks operating in countries including Burma, Cambodia and Laos.

Pirro said crypto seizures are “an important part of the Scam Center Strike Force’s work,” adding: “My Office will seek through the legal process to forfeit these funds and return them to the victims as much as possible.”

The Scam Center Strike Force

Established in November 2025, the Scam Center Strike Force coordinates the Department of Justice, FBI, Secret Service, U.S. Treasury Department, and other government agencies and targets transnational criminal networks that have earned billions of dollars from so-called “pig slaughter” scams.

Pig slaughter uses social engineering to encourage victims to purchase cryptocurrency before the scammers divert the funds and take control through fake investment domains and applications. Southeast Asia has become a hotbed of scammers, who often rely on forced labor, which Interpol elevated to a global threat last year.

In September 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on 19 entities in Burma and Cambodia, dismantling scam operations that would cost victims more than $10 billion by 2024. Last month, Amnesty International warned that mass escapes of workers from Cambodian scam complexes have created a “humanitarian crisis” as trafficking victims flee abuse, including rape and torture.

Deddy Lavid, CEO of blockchain analytics platform Cyvers, said Declutter that while the $580 million seizures announced Thursday are “certainly operationally meaningful,” in the broader context of global crypto fraud, it “represents only a fraction of the total activity we observe.”

Lavid added that the company has done so identified There are approximately 27,000 active criminal groups worldwide, with approximately $27.5 billion in fraud and discovered illicit value streams.

The China connection

In Thursday’s announcement, Pirro linked Southeast Asian scam networks to “Chinese organized crime,” operating through transnational criminal organizations.

According to Lavid, the picture is more nuanced; while a “meaningful share” of Southeast Asian scam infrastructure exhibits “operational, linguistic, financial or routing ties” to Chinese TCOs, the networks involved are “increasingly decentralized and hybrid in nature.”

These hybrid networks, he added, often involve local operators, regional facilitators and cross-border money laundering hubs, with “core orchestration layers” built on top of Chinese-language infrastructure and financial routing patterns, linked to regional execution hubs in locations such as Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos and “distributed money laundering and payout layers across multiple jurisdictions.”

The result, he said, is that Chinese TCOs “appear to play a central coordinating role” in an increasingly “multinational and operationally fragmented” criminal ecosystem.