U.S. government agencies are stepping up their response to overseas scams that seek to trick people into sending cryptocurrencies, with the Treasury Department announcing a Scam Center strike force on Wednesday, even as it flagged its latest effort to target a Myanmar operation that was pursuing Americans with fake investment plans.
U.S. authorities, including the Justice Department, are building a strike force to tackle so-called “pig slaughter,” often coordinated by massive organized crime operations in countries including Burma, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines. The most recent case involved Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioning armed groups, businesses and individuals in Burma associated with the Benevolent Karen Democratic Army and scam centers allegedly supported by Chinese criminal organizations.
The strike force, led by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, aims to dismantle Southeast Asian transnational criminal enterprises that have stolen tens of billions from Americans — much of which goes unreported. The practice sees teams of agents – often forced into it via human trafficking – working on a factory scale to trick people into fraudulently investing or sending funds to fake romantic partners.
“The administration will continue to use every tool we have to pursue these cybercriminals – wherever they operate – and to protect American families from their exploitation,” Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John Hurley said in a statement.
The Strike Force plans to assign oversight functions related to this area to various parts of the federal government, including the DOJ, Treasury Department, State Department, and domestic law enforcement agencies.
“The scale is staggering,” Ari Redbord, global head of policy and government affairs at TRM Laboratories, said of the global criminal enterprises involved in pig butchery. “The DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force reflects a harsh truth: No single agency can tackle this problem alone.”
Along the same lines, the DOJ has already created a health care task force and a commercial fraud task force.
Last month, U.S. authorities went after Prince Group, which allegedly ran an operation in Cambodia, and the DOJ made what it called its largest seizure ever, 127,271 bitcoins. . The action was coordinated between the DOJ and Treasury.
In Burma, the development of fraud centers has been linked by US authorities to other sanctioned entities, including Trans Asia International Holding Group Thailand Company Ltd. (Trans Asia), Troth Star Co. Ltd. (Troth Star) and Thai national Chamu Sawang. The sanctions accused them of being linked to Chinese organized crime, and authorities said the profits would be used to finance Burma’s civil war.
