West Africa scam crackdown removes 3.7M accounts, flags $11M in crypto

An organized campaign against scam operations in West Africa has resulted in the arrest of 28 people in Ghana and Nigeria. The Justice Department said that there is about $11 million in cryptocurrencies that can possibly be seized.

The more significant move, however, was the efforts toward shutting down the recipients’ infrastructure and financial operations.

Going after the accounts, not just the operators

The campaign called “Joint Disruption Week” started on October 6 at the head office of the UK’s National Crime Agency in London. The investigators joined forces with such companies as Meta, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Binance, Coinbase, and many others. Together they managed to take down over 3.7 million accounts, Pages and Groups, in addition to sharing useful clues on over 30 suspected scam centers.

“We are not simply trying to stop individual scams,” FBI official Matthew Floyd told Axios. “We intend to dismantle the criminal enterprises behind them.”

US Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro stated that a piece of information from Meta made it possible to organize this campaign.

The numbers behind the raids

Ghanaian authorities arrested 19 people and seized 303 devices; Nigerian officers arrested nine and seized 53. In Ghana, officials also found 117 trafficking victims forced to conduct scams. They await repatriation to Nigeria.

Importantly, it must be noted that it was pointed out that $11 million may potentially be frozen, but has not been confirmed to be seized. Coinbase stated that they have found more than 65 active victims and prevented more than $415,000 from being lost.

According to FBI Director Kash Patel, agents “arrested dozens of criminal actors, seized hundreds of devices, identified at least $11 million in potentially freezable funds, and truly saved lives.”

A smaller, messier version of the Southeast Asia problem

Networks in West Africa are less concentrated and more diffused than in Southeast Asia. Their schemes run from fake jobs and romance scams to police impersonation and bogus recovery offers. This makes enforcement harder since investigators must target multiple accounts and payment channels rather than a handful of centralized operations.

There is a significant financial risk involved. Chainalysis estimates that crypto scams could have stolen more than $17 billion, while impersonation fraud increased by over 1,400% in 2025. While the $11 million identified in West Africa is significant, it is much smaller than the amount reported in previous American operations targeted at networks in Southeast Asia.

Context is necessary regarding the comparison. The DOJ has cracked down on a series of Chinese-led fraud schemes in Burma and Cambodia last April, targeting everything from bogus investment promises to trafficking rings. By that point, authorities had seized more than $700 million in total.

In September, investigators targeted Xinbi, a Chinese-language site providing money laundering services to scammers. This one operation grabbed an additional $52 million, taking total funds seized to around $938 million. But unlike those funds, the $11 million from West Africa is only potentially freezable.

The hard part is getting the money back

A September FinCEN alert explains how scammers move proceeds through layers of wallets and intermediaries. TRM Labs estimates Chinese-language laundering networks processed over $100 billion in 2025.

Speed presents another barrier. Earlier, Cryptopolitan covered a study of 2,955 Tether freezes that indicated an average gap of more than two hours between the initiation and implementation of the freeze, allowing the funds to escape. FATF findings showed some blind spots offshore exchanges may face, including a Nigerian case of frozen wallet containing around $600 million in funds.

What it means for exchanges and the wider market

Binance, Coinbase and stablecoin issuers face growing pressure to flag suspicious flows, file reports and respond quickly, raising compliance costs.

Faster intervention could strengthen confidence in crypto markets. But flagged funds are not recovered funds, and tougher controls must avoid disrupting legitimate users.

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