WASHINGTON (Diya TV) — FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau and its international partners have dismantled more than 20 overseas scam compounds and seized more than $17 billion in assets through Operation Blackout. He announced the figures at a White House cybercrime roundtable on Oct. 21, but did not provide a breakdown of the seizures or explain how much money authorities have returned to victims.
Patel said the compounds operate in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East. He also reported that authorities recently arrested 300 people in Ghana and Nigeria and seized $15 million linked to scams targeting older Americans. The FBI has not released a public case-by-case account verifying those figures.
The announcement followed an Oct. 13 Justice Department statement about an international operation targeting West African scam networks. That effort involved authorities from 10 countries and 15 technology companies. Officials reported 28 arrests and the rescue of 117 people they identified as trafficking victims. Meta said it removed more than 3.7 million Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages and groups linked to the networks.
The West African operation targeted fraud schemes including fake job offers, romance scams and impersonation. Authorities said some criminal networks forced people recruited with false job promises to carry out scams. Those operations tend to be smaller and more decentralized than the large compounds reported in parts of Southeast Asia.
Attorney General Todd Blanche cited another international case: a joint operation involving the FBI, Dubai police and Chinese authorities that led to at least 276 arrests and the dismantling of nine alleged scam centers. Authorities said those centers ran cryptocurrency investment schemes that defrauded victims.
Blanche said the Justice Department has created a scam center unit with the Homeland Security Task Force and assigned prosecutors across all 94 U.S. attorney’s offices to pursue online fraud cases. He said prosecutors are targeting managers and recruiters as well as people who contact victims.
Patel said technology companies, including Meta, Google, Microsoft and IBM, helped authorities disrupt online networks and domains. He urged people who encounter suspected fraud to report it to the FBI, saying reports can help investigators connect cases and identify larger networks.
The FBI has received more than 1 million internet-crime complaints, according to figures cited at the roundtable. President Donald Trump said federal agencies had warned more than 10,000 potential victims and prevented at least $1.6 billion in losses this year. Those prevention figures also came from administration officials and were not accompanied by a public methodology at the event.
