Meta releases results of joint crackdown on West African scam networks

On October 13, Meta released the results of a joint crackdown on West African scam networks carried out with the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) and the US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As part of the operation, Meta removed more than 3.7 million Facebook and Instagram accounts, Pages and Groups based in West Africa. Law enforcement received leads on more than 30 scam centers, arrested 28 people and rescued 117 people who had been trafficked into forced labor by scam syndicates. Technology companies including Coinbase, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Starlink and Adobe took part. Meta said the operation was the first joint disruption to broadly target criminal scam networks in the West Africa region.

The operation was staged in London. According to Meta's announcement, beginning Tuesday, October 6, the NCA, together with the FBI, the US Department of Justice, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and other agencies, convened Meta and other technology companies at its London headquarters. Ghanaian and Nigerian police and law enforcement from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and India also attended. On the first day, Jeanine Pirro, US Attorney for the District of Columbia and leader of the Justice Department's Scam Center Strike Force, delivered a call to action. According to the NCA announcement reviewed by METAL, the in-person operation ran from October 6 to 9 and brought together more than 100 people from overseas law enforcement agencies and technology companies. It was the fourth initiative of its kind, with 15 agencies and 15 companies taking part, and the first hosted by the NCA. The event was paid for by the Home Office's Integrated Security Fund.

Many of the removed accounts posed as Americans and Britons. Meta said a majority of the more than 3.7 million it removed appeared to target people in the US and the UK using profiles that impersonated American and British users. "Scams are a global threat that demand a global response," said Chris Sonderby, Meta's Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, adding that "this operation shows what partnership makes possible." Microsoft also suspended accounts suspected of being associated with the scam activity. According to the NCA, data that Report Fraud, the UK's fraud reporting service, provided to Meta led to more than 1,110 West African accounts being disabled, while more than 490 Facebook accounts, more than 490 ad accounts and more than 380 scam domains were disabled separately.

Enforcement on the ground took place in Ghana and Nigeria. In Sasaabi in Ghana's Accra region, 19 people were arrested and 303 electronic devices seized, and in Nigeria's Delta State nine people were arrested, with six laptops, 35 phones and 12 routers seized. The 117 people rescued had been held in a residential compound in Ghana and forced to work on scams. Meta said the victims were malnourished and had suffered physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their captors. The captors were arrested and face prosecution. The NCA said the victims were pending return to Nigeria.

The money trail was cut as well. Coinbase identified more than 65 active scam victims and stopped more than $415,000 in losses before they occurred. Private sector partners identified $11 million in potentially freezable funds. FBI Director Kash Patel said that "across multiple African countries, we arrested dozens of criminal actors, seized hundreds of devices, identified at least $11 million in potentially freezable funds." According to reports, the $11 million the FBI cited is an amount that could be frozen rather than one already frozen or seized, and Meta's announcement did not break the 3.7 million down into accounts, Pages and Groups.

AI sits on both sides of this fight. "Fraud networks now run at industrial scale, using AI to target victims and move proceeds across chains faster than any manual process can follow," said Will LaForest, Chief Customer Officer at Chainalysis. According to reports, research released in July by a security company found that AI had cut the entry cost of a scam farm to $5,000, with an operator able to rent the whole toolset for $2,970 a month. On the defensive side, Jack Stubbs, Lead Scams Investigator at OpenAI, said OpenAI is "using AI to disrupt scam operations and help people spot scams." Threat intelligence company Silent Push mapped more than 35,000 malicious domains and nearly 700 communication channels tied to scam centers in Africa, helping law enforcement trace the networks to physical locations and operators.

West Africa was targeted because the networks are moving. Meta said scam centers in Nigeria, Ghana and elsewhere in West Africa are generally more decentralized and less industrial than those in Southeast Asia, and that criminals are continually seeking new havens where they believe they can operate with impunity. "As criminal networks try to reestablish in Africa, Coinbase's Global Intelligence team is following the money, freezing assets, and sharing intelligence in real time," said Leah Bressack, Vice President at Coinbase. According to reports, Meta said in March that it had removed 10.9 million accounts tied to scam centers. METAL has reported on Meta's rebuttal of a scam ads report by the Polish think tank Instrat.

The crackdown exposed seven types of fraud: investment scams that build fake romantic or professional relationships before luring victims into fraudulent investments including cryptocurrency; job or task scams that extract upfront fees through fake jobs; law enforcement impersonation by criminals posing as police or officials; military impersonation to win trust; non-delivery scams in which payment is taken for goods that never arrive; romance scams; and scam recovery, in which prior victims are promised the return of lost money for an upfront fee. The NCA listed warning signs of investment fraud, including online adverts promising guaranteed returns, celebrity endorsements, requests to move conversations to messaging apps or social media, and demands for tax or fees before funds can be withdrawn. "Fraudsters can operate from anywhere and will target victims both domestically and globally," said Nick Sharp, Deputy Director of Fraud at the NCA.

The next steps are prosecution and repetition. The charges and trials of the 28 people arrested and of the compound's operators have not yet been made public. Meta said meaningful progress ultimately depends on real consequences for the criminal organizations, and that it will keep repeating this model of industry and law enforcement working side by side. "No single organization sees the full picture," said Steven Masada, Associate General Counsel and General Manager of Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit. What the operation leaves behind is evidence that gathering a scam chain scattered across platforms, payment networks and borders into one room and cutting it at once works in West Africa too.