US and UK Sign Landmark Alliance Against Crypto Scam Centers

The US Department of Justice and UK law enforcement signed a first-of-its-kind agreement to jointly fight crypto scam centers, and it bears directly on how quickly authorities can chase down fraud networks that move victims' money through USDT and other crypto assets. The primary targets are organized groups in Southeast Asia, but the fallout also reaches ordinary wallet holders who get lured into fake investment schemes.

US and UK sign a landmark alliance

The agreement was signed by the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales, and the UK National Crime Agency. The DOJ called the document a "first-of-its-kind" international cooperation mechanism aimed at dismantling scam centers themselves, not just punishing individual operators, who are rarely tracked down in person anyway. Until now, American and British agencies had mostly worked in parallel, sharing data only on a case-by-case basis, so a formal coordination deal is something market participants had been waiting on for a while. Under the deal, the agencies will run parallel investigations into shared targets, share intelligence on organized crime networks, and coordinate which jurisdiction prosecutes a given case first, so work does not get duplicated and evidence does not go stale while one side moves faster than the other. Authorities have already found overlapping cases on both sides of the Atlantic and are planning a joint disruption operation with private-sector partners in London in early October. Details of that operation have not been released, but the DOJ's language points specifically at dismantling infrastructure rather than another round of individual indictments. For crypto exchanges and exchangers, that most likely means more formal requests to disclose information on suspicious clients, rather than just the informal warnings agencies relied on before.

Investor losses climbed to $8.65 billion

The pact comes as reported US losses from crypto investment fraud keep climbing. According to the DOJ, complaints to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center show losses rising 89%, to $8.65 billion in 2025 from $4.57 billion in 2023. Most of these schemes follow the classic pig-butchering model, where a victim is lured through romantic or business messaging, then gradually talked into moving money, usually into USDT, onto a fake investment platform. USDT appeals to fraudsters because transfers on the Tron network are cheap and nearly instant, which makes them hard to trace without exchanges cooperating directly with investigators. That adds extra work for exchanges' own compliance teams, who end up manually checking transaction chains before clearing large withdrawals. That is exactly why the fight against scam centers matters for the crypto market directly. Every scam farm that gets shut down means less stolen money later gets laundered through legitimate exchanges and exchangers. The distinctive feature of pig butchering is that a victim gets groomed for weeks or months, with the amounts growing gradually while a fake platform displays made-up "profits" on screen, so one well-executed scheme can wipe out years of someone's savings.

Behind the Scam Center Strike Force

The new agreement expands the Scam Center Strike Force, a task force US Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro launched in November 2025 to counter Chinese organized crime networks running scam centers mostly across Southeast Asia. According to the DOJ, these schemes are often tied not just to crypto fraud but also to human trafficking and money laundering, since some call-center "operators" are held there against their will, having been lured abroad under false job offers. The task force pulls together several federal agencies, each covering its own slice of the investigation.

• The FBI and US Secret Service handle domestic operational investigations.
• IRS Criminal Investigation traces financial flows and money laundering.
• Homeland Security Investigations covers cross-border schemes and trafficking tied to scam centers.
• The Treasury and State Department step in for asset freezes and diplomatic pressure on third countries.

What already worked in Dubai and Myanmar

On April 29, the DOJ reported a Dubai police-led operation involving the FBI and China's Ministry of Public Security that resulted in 276 arrests and the closure of at least nine crypto scam centers. Six people were charged over schemes that used fake investment platforms to solicit victim deposits. Raids like this one mostly catch rank-and-file call-center "operators" rather than the people running the schemes, who are the hardest to reach across jurisdictions. Southeast Asian governments are also tightening domestic law. Beyond Myanmar, similar compounds have been documented at scale in Cambodia and along the Thai border, where rights groups estimate tens of thousands of workers are held under guard inside these centers. On May 15, Myanmar's military government released draft legislation proposing 10 years to life in prison for digital fraud, with the death penalty possible when people coerced into working at scam centers were killed. On July 28, Myanmar's parliament approved the bill, though presidential assent has not been confirmed. Together, these examples suggest results come from combining two approaches: targeted raids on specific sites and legislative pressure on the countries where such centers are physically based and where call-center workers get forcibly brought in.

What it means for the crypto market and traders

Heavier law-enforcement pressure rarely stops fraudsters overnight, it usually pushes them toward more convoluted ways of moving funds, so exchanges and exchangers will likely have to screen suspicious USDT and Bitcoin transactions more closely. For everyday investors the takeaway is simple: no stranger promising "guaranteed" crypto returns through a messaging app or dating site deserves trust, no matter how convincing the pitch sounds. A telltale sign of the scheme is a platform showing "profit" that keeps climbing on screen while blocking any attempt to withdraw money under the excuse of a "fee" or a "tax." Ukrainian wallet holders are not exempt from these schemes either, since pig-butchering operators work through social media and dating apps regardless of a victim's country. Recovering stolen funds even after arrests is rare, since the money usually passes through a mix of wallets, exchangers and cross-chain bridges before it settles with the people who ran the scheme. The US-UK agreement is only a first step. The real test comes with the October operation in London, which will show whether the paperwork turns into actual arrests.