The US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has traced $12.7 billion in cryptocurrency transactions to suspected scam operations run from overseas locations.
FinCEN's report, published Thursday, drew on more than 33,000 filings submitted between September 2023 and December 2025 that flagged suspected digital-asset fraud. The analysis identified roughly $13 billion in financial flows connected to pig-butchering schemes, romance fraud and cryptocurrency confidence scams, in which perpetrators deceive victims into transferring funds with fabricated promises of outsized returns.
Gene Lange, performing the duties of Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, described digital-asset investment scams as one of the most serious fraud risks Americans face.
The network said the schemes were chiefly orchestrated by transnational criminal organizations operating from compounds in Southeast Asia.
Authorities in the region have begun legislative action against the fraud hubs. In July Myanmar's Parliament passed a bill allowing sentences of up to life imprisonment for operators who employ violence, torture or unlawful detention to coerce individuals into taking part in scam activity. Cambodia's legislature put forward comparable legislation in April that similarly proposed prison terms for offenders.
Source: cointelegraph.com