A retired schoolteacher in the Midwest was days from cashing out her 401(k) when her phone rang earlier this year. On the other end was an FBI agent with unwelcome news: the cryptocurrency trading platform she had been funding for months, the one showing steady double-digit returns and staffed by attentive customer-service reps, did not exist. Every dollar she had deposited was already in the hands of an overseas fraud ring. Her case, drawn from FBI case studies published on the bureau’s website, is one of nearly 9,000 that Operation Level Up has intercepted since the program launched. About 77 percent of the people agents reached were still actively wiring money to scammers when the call came.
Inside the intervention machine
Operation Level Up operates out of the FBI’s D.C.-based Scam Center Strike Force. Blockchain analysts monitor wallet activity flagged through the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and cross-reference it against known fraudulent platforms. Once a match is confirmed, field agents call the victim directly. The pitch is blunt: here is the evidence that your portfolio is a fabrication, and here is how to stop the bleeding.
Not everyone believes it right away. In published case narratives, agents describe victims who argued, hung up, or accused the bureau of running its own scam. Others broke down on the call. The FBI says the program has prevented 80 suicides among people who were in crisis after learning their savings were gone, a figure the bureau has cited publicly without releasing supporting methodology.
That last detail raises a practical question the FBI has begun addressing in its outreach: how does someone know the call is legitimate and not yet another con? The bureau advises anyone who receives such a call to hang up, look up the local FBI field office number independently, and call back to verify. Agents will never ask for money, passwords, or remote access to a device.
How the numbers have grown through early 2026
By December 2025, the FBI reported 8,103 victims notified and an estimated $511.5 million in losses averted, according to the bureau’s Operation Level Up program page. Figures the DOJ shared in early 2026 put the totals at roughly 8,935 victims and $562.7 million. The acceleration does not signal that the FBI is catching up; it reflects how quickly new scam operations are spinning up overseas.
A methodological note: the FBI calculates projected savings using average complaint data from IC3, estimating how much more each victim would likely have sent. The underlying case-level math has not been published, so independent analysts cannot gauge whether the assumptions are conservative or generous, or whether some victims might have stopped on their own.
The international dragnet: 276 arrests and more than $700 million frozen
Separately, the DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force has restrained more than $700 million in cryptocurrency and dismantled hundreds of fraudulent websites linked to Southeast Asian scam compounds. International law-enforcement announcements reported by multiple outlets describe 276 arrests carried out jointly with authorities in Dubai and China. The DOJ has confirmed broad international cooperation but has not published a breakdown specifying which foreign agency contributed individual arrests or evidence, so the precise figure has not been independently verified through primary U.S. federal records.
A civil forfeiture complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York seeks to forfeit approximately 127,271 Bitcoin tied to wire fraud and money laundering. No court has issued a final ruling, and no restitution has been distributed. Forfeiture proceedings of this scale routinely stretch for years, and tracing restrained crypto back to identified U.S. victims, as opposed to global fraud proceeds, adds another layer of complexity. Frozen funds and recovered funds are not the same thing.
The $10 billion scam economy
The fraud that Operation Level Up is trying to interrupt is not the work of freelance grifters. The U.S. Treasury estimated that Americans lost at least $10 billion in 2024 to scam operations based in Southeast Asia, a 66 percent jump from the prior year. Treasury sanctions have tied those networks to forced labor and human trafficking: workers lured to compounds in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos with fake job offers, then held against their will and forced to run fraud schemes around the clock.
The scam itself has a name in law-enforcement circles: pig butchering. Operators spend weeks, sometimes months, cultivating a relationship with a target through dating apps, LinkedIn messages, or social-media DMs. The conversation eventually drifts toward a “can’t-miss” crypto opportunity. The victim is shown fabricated returns, encouraged to deposit more, and then cleaned out when the operators drain the wallet and disappear. The grooming is methodical, which is why even financially literate victims get caught.
Rescue operations targeting the trafficking victims inside these compounds have been limited and uneven. Some workers have been freed in raids by Thai and Philippine police; others remain trapped. Federal agencies now frame crypto investment fraud as both a national-security threat and a human-rights crisis, not merely a consumer-protection issue.
Red flags and what to do if you suspect a scam
The FBI urges anyone who believes they may be caught in a crypto investment scam to file a complaint at ic3.gov immediately. Warning signs include:
- Unsolicited investment advice from someone you met online, especially if the relationship started on a dating app or social platform.
- A trading platform that shows consistent high returns with no losing days.
- Pressure to move funds quickly, switch exchanges, or convert assets to cryptocurrency.
- Resistance or excuses when you try to withdraw money.
If any of those apply, stop sending money, contact your bank or exchange to attempt to freeze outgoing transfers, and document every transaction and communication for law enforcement.
Operation Level Up’s partial but measurable impact on a $10 billion problem
Operation Level Up has changed the federal playbook on fraud by intervening while crimes are still in progress rather than cataloging damage after the fact. Thousands of people have been warned in time. Hundreds of millions in projected losses have been headed off. But set against $10 billion in estimated annual U.S. losses and entrenched criminal networks that operate across borders with near impunity, the program’s reach remains partial. The FBI has not disclosed how many agents are assigned to the effort or whether the budget will expand in fiscal year 2027. Legislation targeting pig-butchering infrastructure, including bills that would impose sanctions on foreign telecom providers servicing scam compounds, has been introduced in Congress but has not advanced to a floor vote as of mid-2026. For now, the most reliable defense is still the one the retired teacher in the Midwest almost did not get: a phone call that arrives before the last dollar goes out the door.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
