FBI’s Bangkok office set up a joint task force with Royal Thai Police last August to go after scam compounds in the region. Royal Thai Police have since seized over 8,000 phones and 1,300 hard drives from suspected compounds. FBI Deputy Assistant Director Scott Schelble says they’re no longer just targeting individual scammers but dismantling the networks financing and sustaining the compounds, tracing crypto across blockchains and freezing accounts.
DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force has frozen or seized over $580 million in crypto so far. The FBI is also rotating special agents to Thailand on six-month deployments to work alongside Thai authorities. Meanwhile, Meta just took down 150,000+ accounts tied to scam center networks as part of a joint effort with Thai police, leading to 21 arrests.
