Meta and the other technology companies that joined a week-long Justice Department operation against scam networks in West Africa removed more than 3.7 million accounts, Pages and Groups, the department said Tuesday. Authorities in Ghana and Nigeria arrested 28 people, 19 in Ghana and nine in Nigeria, and private-sector partners identified at least $11 million in funds that could potentially be frozen.
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The October 13 announcement closes out what the department calls a joint disruption week that began October 6. The scams in question reach into American households through phone calls, texts and social media messages, and the Justice Department’s release says the accounts targeted people in the United States, the United Kingdom and beyond.
What the disruption week produced
The counts in the release come from several directions. The 3.7 million figure is the partner companies’ own: Meta, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Coinbase, Binance, Starlink, Adobe and others named in the release took down accounts, Pages and Groups on their platforms. The 28 arrests were made by a consortium of authorities in the two countries. Investigators also seized 303 devices in Ghana and 53 in Nigeria, according to the department.
In Ghana, officers identified 117 trafficking victims who are awaiting return to Nigeria. They also identified 89 scam victims who lost about $8.3 million between them. Partners gave law enforcement leads on more than 30 suspected scam centers. A scam center, in the department’s description, is a site where workers are recruited and trained in social engineering to run fraud campaigns across several platforms at once.
The release does not give a total for what the operation’s targets took from Americans. The $11 million is not recovered money. The department calls it potentially freezable, meaning private companies found it where it could still be stopped.
The release names three scams: callers who pose as police or federal agents, people told they face “digital arrest” unless they pay, and cryptocurrency investment fraud. Anyone who answers a call like that, or gets an unexpected message from a friendly stranger about a crypto investment, is who these networks were built to reach. The practical question after an announcement like this one is how a person reduces the chance of being the next name on the list.
The release does not say how these particular rings chose the people they contacted. Data brokers and people-search sites keep profiles with names, phone numbers and home addresses, and Incogni sends removal requests to those brokers for you, asking them to remove your personal information and re-sending the requests. Less personal data on broker lists can mean fewer scam calls, texts and emails, though it does not stop a caller who already has a number.
The scams in the crosshairs
Here is what each one looks like. Law enforcement impersonation is the first, where a caller claims to be a police officer or federal agent. Digital arrest extortion is a variation, where a victim is told they face prosecution unless they pay. Cryptocurrency investment fraud, often called pig butchering, is the third, in which a stranger builds trust before steering a victim into a fake investment.
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, known as IC3, gives the scale. Investment scam losses reported to it rose from $3.96 billion in 2023 to $5.8 billion in 2024, according to the release, and investment scams with a cryptocurrency link rose 24 percent in 2025 to more than $7.2 billion. The department says those figures are believed to significantly understate actual losses.
Impersonation is its own problem. In a September 17 alert, the FBI said IC3 logged roughly 61,000 law enforcement and government impersonation complaints from January 2025 through July 2026, with reported losses above $1.6 billion. The callers threaten arrest, claim a missed court date or jury duty, or demand a fee for an expiring passport. The alert says they reach victims mostly by unsolicited phone call, spoof real phone numbers and agency credentials, and tell people not to speak to family, banks or police.
The officials behind it
“Criminals beware: Law enforcement from around the world are working together, and with private industry,” said A. Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division. He called the operation “just the beginning.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said, “We are demolishing Scam Centers across the globe and crushing a criminal industry preying on American citizens.” Jeanine Ferris Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and founder of the department’s Scam Center Strike Force, put it this way: “Transnational fraud demands a transnational response.” Nick Sharp, deputy director of fraud at the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, which hosted the week in London, said fraudsters “will target victims both domestically and globally.”
Where the money trail goes
The financial side of the operation is where private companies did the work that police cannot do quickly. Crypto exchanges and blockchain analysis firms, including Binance, Coinbase, Chainalysis, Elliptic and TRM Labs, are on the participant list, and the department credits the private-sector partners with spotting the $11 million. Freezing is a first step. Getting money back to a victim still takes a court process, and the release does not describe one.
The FBI’s alert lists the payment methods impersonators demand: prepaid cards, couriers, bank wires, cryptocurrency, and cash fed into crypto kiosks. The FBI says real law enforcement and government agencies never call or text to demand payment or sensitive information, and never ask for prepaid cards, cryptocurrency or couriers.
The department also says this is one piece of a larger effort. The Scam Center Strike Force launched in November 2025 to go after scam centers in Southeast Asia, and a March 6, 2026 executive order made cybercrime and fraud a priority. The release cites one government estimate that scam syndicates steal nearly $64 billion a year worldwide, as of the end of 2023.
Reporting a scam call or a fake investment pitch
The free route is IC3 itself. People who lose money or are targeted can file a complaint at ic3.gov, the FBI’s reporting center. The FBI’s alert says a victim should stop contact immediately, tell their bank or financial institutions, report to local police and file with IC3, keeping contact details, payment records and messages.
Before filing, gather the phone number or account that made contact, the dates, the amounts and the method of payment, and screenshots of any messages. The alert also advises checking web addresses closely, because lookalike sites may swap a “.gov” for a “.com,” and looking up an agency’s number independently instead of calling back the number the caller gave.
One more trap is recovery offers. IC3 says it does not work with law firms or crypto services to recover lost funds, and that it will never directly contact a person for information or money. Anyone who gets a message claiming to be IC3 and asking for a fee is being scammed a second time.
Personal details sitting on broker lists
The networks in this case ran impersonation and investment scams, and both start with reaching a real person by phone, text or message. Incogni asks data brokers and people-search sites to remove your personal information, sends the removal requests on your behalf and keeps re-sending them. You can see the status of each request in your account.
Put Incogni’s removal requests to work on the broker lists holding your name →
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire’s editorial team.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
