FBI chief Kash Patel says $17 bn seized as US widens war on foreign scam centres

Washington: FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau and its partners have seized more than $17 billion from overseas scam compounds under Operation Blackout, as the Trump administration launched a government-wide crackdown on call centres and online networks that defraud Americans.

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with our partners at DOJ and the United States Attorney's offices, have seized over $17 billion from these scam compound fraud centres," Patel told a White House roundtable on cybercrime and scams chaired by President Donald Trump on Wednesday. "Seized it. That means that's money we got back."

Patel, the first Indian-American to head the FBI, said the operation had "destroyed and demolished over 20 compounds" run by criminal syndicates.

"Scam centres for the American public and the world are literally towns and ecosystems with traffic victims with cities and housing that they built an empire for criminal syndicates to fleece American citizens," he said. "They're in Southeast Asia. They're in Africa. They're in the Middle East."

"They moved to Africa. We got them there, too," Patel said. "Just two weeks ago, we were in Ghana, Nigeria, and we arrested another 300 individuals and seized another $15 million being fleeced from American senior citizens through these scam centre operations."

Attorney General Todd Blanche said that in April, "FBI and the Dubai Police announced the arrests of at least 276 individuals and the dismantlement of at least nine scam centres that targeted Americans", while prosecutors "unsealed charges against their managers and their recruiters".

Trump, opening the session, said, "Federal law enforcement has been able to warn over 10,000 Americans targeted for victimisation, and we prevented $1.6 billion in losses, at least this year."

"Federal law enforcement has also frozen nearly $1 billion of cyber currency, and tied to foreign scammers, shut down more than 500 fraudulent websites, and coordinated with technology companies to disrupt millions and millions of online accounts used by foreign criminals," he said.

He added that authorities had "engaged with international partners to arrest hundreds of foreign scammers of all types, including scam call centres".

Blanche said the State Department was now refusing entry to scam operators. "There is no corner of government from which these predators can hide," he said. "HSI and FBI are identifying them. The State Department is denying them visas, and our prosecutors are charging them."

He did not say how many visas had been refused or which nationalities were affected.

He said the Justice Department had set up a "new scam centre cell" with the Homeland Security Task Force so that "every case is built to take down not just one scammer, but the whole network". Its cyber-enabled scam initiative, he said, "deploys dozens of prosecutors across all 94 US attorneys' offices".

He also said the department last month "seized Shinbee Criminal Marketplace and restrained $52 million on the same day that Treasury sanctioned it".

Patel said technology firms including "Meta, Google, Microsoft, IBM" had "shut down internet trafficking and domain networks", and urged victims to report to the FBI. "No piece of information is too small," he said.

"We are not waiting for the scammers to hit our citizens. We are going out there in full force," Patel said.

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