A coordinated effort by international law enforcement agencies and tech companies to crack down on fraud and scams based in countries across West Africa led to the arrests of 30 suspected scammers and the removal of 3.7 million online profiles and accounts, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said in a Tuesday (Oct. 13) press release.
The NCA hosted this initiative, which included participation by 15 international law enforcement agencies and 15 tech companies, according to the release.
“Fraud is a global problem and it takes partnership working across international boundaries to tackle it,” Nick Sharp, deputy director of fraud at the NCA, said in the release. “Hosting such a rich and dedicated team of law enforcement and technology companies at NCA’s headquarters enabled us to utilize the power of partnerships and strike back at a significant set of criminals who inflict misery on thousands of victims of fraud.”
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The U.S. Department of Justice, which was among the participants in the initiative, said in a Tuesday press release that this “Joint Disruption Week” effort demonstrated a growing global commitment to dismantling transnational scam networks and was the first such effort focused on West Africa.
“Transnational fraud demands a transnational response,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro for the District of Colombia, founder of the Scam Center Strike Force, said in the release. “I have partnered with the NCA and the Crown Prosecutor for England and Wales to push forward cases on both sides of the Atlantic; criminals are not hindered by borders and neither are we.”
Among the tech company participants, Meta played a key role in coordinating the event and encouraging private sector participation, according to the NCA’s press release.
Meta said in a Tuesday press release that during the operation, it removed more than 3.7 million accounts, pages and groups from Facebook and Instagram; Microsoft suspended accounts suspected of being associated with scam activity; Coinbase identified more than 65 active scam victims and stopped more than $415,000 in potential losses; and platforms secured intelligence that will help them detect and combat criminal groups.
Chris Sonderby, vice president and deputy general counsel at Meta, said in the release that the effort demonstrated a global response to a global threat.
“This operation shows what partnership makes possible, and we’ll keep working with law enforcement and industry to pursue scammers wherever they operate,” Sonderby said.
Scam victims across 42 countries lost $442 billion last year, Bloomberg reported Saturday (Oct. 10), citing data from the Global Anti-Scam Alliance.
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