A PYMNTS Company

DOJ Unveils Crypto Scam ‘Strike Force’ Targeting Criminal Networks Tied to China

By  |  November 13, 2025

The Justice Department’s Washington, DC office is spearheading a new interagency initiative with the FBI, the Treasury and State Departments and the U.S. Secret Service to target international crypto investment scams known as “pig butchering.”

    Get the Full Story

    Complete the form to unlock this article and enjoy unlimited free access to all PYMNTS content — no additional logins required.

    yesSubscribe to our daily newsletter, PYMNTS Today.

    By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

    The Scam Center Strike Force is aimed at dismantling scam operations that are believed to have ties to Chinese crime networks.

    “We’re here today to target a growing epidemic. Crypto investment fraud scams perpetrated by organized Chinese crime syndicates that successfully target Americans and victimize them,” Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia said at a news conference Wednesday to unveil the task force. “This new Strike Force’s mission is to identify and charge the leaders of these cryptocurrency scam organizations, to trace and to seize stolen funds [for] victims, and to seize and disable United States infrastructure that is the manner and the means of the scam itself.”

    According to crypto experts, pig butchering operations, so called because they slowly gain the trust of their victims to “fatten them up,” before stealing their money, typically rely on underground Chinese banking networks to launder the stolen funds.

    “We’ve been treating fentanyl like a drug crime, we’ve been treating North Korea like a cyber crime, we’ve been talking about pig butchering like scams,” Ari Redbord, a former Treasury Department official and U.S. attorney now with TRM, told Decrypt earlier this year. “People need to stop talking about these things as siloed threats and start talking about the Chinese money-laundering networks facilitating all of it.”

    TRM officials pointed to heist of $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum by North Korean hackers in February as an example of the international scope of the scams.

    Read more: Bank of England Deputy Warns Against Over-Relaxing Stablecoin Rules

    “All the people taking Ethereum and turning it into Bitcoin through Thorchain and services like that are third parties,” Nick Carlsen, a senior TRM investigator and former FBI analyst. “That’s not the North Koreans. Those are the Chinese money launderers.”

    The TRM officials applauded the formation of the new task force. “The Scam Center Strike Force is the clearest statement yet that the United States intends to fight back with the full power of the state,” Redbord told Decrypt. “Not in isolation, but in coordination: DOJ prosecuting, Treasury sanctioning, FBI investigating, FinCEN analyzing, State pressuring, and industry tracing.”

    A Treasury Department official at Wedneday’s news conference, announced sanctions against a militant group it said operates at a cyber scam compound in Burma that uses violence to force human-trafficking victims to work in scam centers.

    Pirro also tied the Strike Force initiative to President Trump’s agenda to promote the use of crypto. Americans need to feel safe from being scammed by using cryptocurrency in order to embrace the technology. Scammers likely defrauded Americans out of $135 billion in 2024 alone, she said, and that her office has already seized $400 million worth of crypto from bad actor.

    “There are no tricks that can be a part of cryptocurrency,” Pirro said.