The agency stated that “transnational criminal organizations” operating out of facilities located in Southeast Asia were primarily responsible for digital asset fraud directed at individuals living in the United States.
An evaluation conducted by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which is part of the US Department of the Treasury, uncovered $12.7 billion in cryptocurrency transfers “perpetrated by overseas scam centers.”
Based on a FinCEN briefing published on Thursday, an inspection of over 33,000 filings submitted between September 2023 and December 2025 regarding potential crypto fraud pointed to roughly $13 billion in financial transactions. These cryptocurrency-linked swindles encompassed scenarios like pig butchering, romance fraud, and “cryptocurrency confidence schemes,” where targets are tricked into putting funds into crypto through false guarantees of massive profits.
“Digital asset investment scams pose one of the most significant fraud threats facing Americans today,” noted Gene Lange, carrying out the responsibilities of Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.
FinCEN noted that these fraudulent undertakings were largely driven by “transnational criminal organizations” situated inside compounds across Southeast Asia.
Legislators within certain impacted nations have tried to crack down on these so-called “scam centers.” Myanmar’s Parliament passed a bill in July capable of handing down life imprisonment sentences for administrators who applied physical force, torture, and illegal arrests or confinement to compel individuals into joining the operations, while politicians in Cambodia put forward a comparable regulation during April that also featured potential jail terms.
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Originally published at https://cointelegraph.com/news/fincen-crypto-overseas-scam-centers-analysis?utm_source=rss_feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound.
