DOJ, FBI, Secret Service Unveil ‘Strike Force’ to Combat Crypto Scams Rooted in China

The US Department of Justice’s DC office announced Wednesday an interagency initiative specifically designed to crack down on international crypto-fraud operations known as “hog slaughter” schemes.

The Scam Center Strike Force will work across the DOJ, FBI, Secret Service, US Treasury and other government agencies to root out transnational criminal networks that have made billions of dollars in recent years by defrauding people around the world with fake crypto sites and fake identities on social media platforms.

The initiative was announced on Wednesday by Jeanine Pirro, District of Columbia Attorney General. During her remarks, Pirro specifically linked the scourge of online crypto fraud to Chinese organized crime networks.

“We are here today to target a growing epidemic,” Pirro said. “Crypto investment scams perpetrated by organized Chinese crime syndicates that successfully target and victimize Americans.”

Pirro claimed that such schemes likely defrauded Americans of $135 billion in 2024 alone. She said her office has already seized $400 million worth of cryptocurrency from bad actors, and today she will reveal the seizure of another $80 million in stolen cryptocurrency that the DOJ will seek to return to victims.

“This new Strike Force mission is to identify and indict the leaders of these cryptocurrency fraud organizations, trace and seize the stolen funds [for] victims, and to seize and disable the infrastructure of the United States, which is the way and means of fraud itself,” added Pirro.

The US attorney general also linked the initiative to President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto agenda, arguing that since the president has advocated for Americans to embrace the new sector, consumers should feel safe and trust him rather than fear fraud when transacting with cryptocurrencies online.

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

At a news conference on Wednesday, a Treasury official also announced sanctions against a militant group he said operates a cyber fraud complex in Burma and perpetrates violence against human trafficking victims who are forced to work at the fraud center against their will. The Finance Ministry also sanctioned two companies and a Thai national linked to a Burmese militant group and Chinese organized crime.

Leading crypto security experts have long argued that the US government has failed to tackle pig slaughter scams — so named because fraudsters slowly build trust with victims, “fattening” them before stealing their money — with a coordinated, interagency approach.

Instead, agencies like the Treasury Department and the FBI have focused on different elements of these crimes without acknowledging their common roots in the Chinese black markets that facilitate most crypto crime, experts at blockchain intelligence firm TRM told Decipher earlier this year.

TRM leadership hailed today’s announcement as a much-needed shift in the federal government’s approach—one that will allow the US government to attack global crypto-crime networks in a coordinated manner, as opposed to a piecemeal defense.

“The Scam Center Strike Force is the clearest statement yet that the United States intends to retaliate with full state power,” Global Policy Director Ari Redbord told TRM Decipher. “Not in isolation, but in coordination: DOJ prosecution, Treasury sanctioning, FBI investigation, FinCEN analysis, government pressure and industry monitoring.”

Last month, the DOJ announced the seizure 14 billion dollars Bitcoin worth from an alleged Cambodia-based crypto fraud network with ties to China. The operation was the largest asset forfeiture operation in DOJ history, and included criminal charges, financial sanctions, diplomatic moves and chain tracing.

TRM’s Redbord said the operation—which involved coordinated actions by the DOJ, FBI, DEA and State Department—represents a model for how the Scam Center Strike Force can work to eradicate crypto-crime in the future.

“It showed that when law enforcement, regulators and intelligence agencies work as one, the model for dismantling global cyber fraud becomes not only reactive, but proactively destructive,” Redbord said.