FIRST ON FOX: FBI Director Kash Patel says the bureau is expanding its global hunt for sprawling scam compounds that prey heavily on Americans, telling Fox News Digital that Operation Blackout has seized roughly $17 billion tied to the schemes.
“At 71 years old, I’m old enough to know that people my age are certainly often targeted because of our unfamiliarity with certain new technologies. Thanks so much for looking out for us,” one victim told the FBI.
“I watched my grandmother lose her life savings to scammers and I would love to see them all be put away,” said another victim.
Operation Blackout is the FBI’s global campaign to identify, disrupt and dismantle foreign scam compounds targeting Americans, combining overseas raids and asset seizures with efforts to cut off the networks’ communications, rescue trafficked workers and return stolen money to victims.
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Patel said the FBI-led initiative is targeting criminal syndicates operating massive scam compounds across Southeast Asia and the Middle East, where trafficked workers are forced to carry out fraud schemes against victims thousands of miles away.
“Unfortunately, the majority of the targets are senior citizens in America,” Patel told Fox News Digital, pointing to schemes carried out through social media, phone calls, text messages and Telegram.
“Our initiative, Operation Blackout, is to prevent, disrupt, and dismantle,” Patel added.
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In one common version of the scheme, criminals cultivate an online friendship or relationship with a victim before steering them toward a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platform.
Victims may initially believe their investments are generating significant returns, only to discover they cannot withdraw their money.
“These are towns, these are cities,” Patel said of the scam compounds targeted by the operation. “These are actual villages with structures where they force people into forced labor.”
An August operation at Cambodia’s roughly 200-acre O’Smach Resort scam compound involved searches of 28 buildings over three days and resulted in the seizure of 113 hard drives, 15 computers and 35 boxes of evidence, according to the FBI.
The bureau is also trying to stop Americans from becoming victims before their money ever reaches the scammers.
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Under Operation Level Up, its domestic prevention component working with U.S. Secret Service, the FBI proactively identifies and contacts potential victims of cryptocurrency investment scams. The bureau says it has notified 10,406 victims and prevented an estimated $660 million in losses, while seizing or freezing another $122 million in cryptocurrency.
The FBI said 77% of the people it contacted did not know they were being scammed. The bureau has also referred 99 victims for suicide intervention, seized 584 scam websites and sent 7,670 scam accounts to private-sector companies for action.
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In September, a DOJ Scam Center Strike Force team that included FBI Honolulu personnel helped authorities in Madagascar take down 13 scam centers operated by Chinese organized crime syndicates and process more than 3,200 electronic devices.
Patel said the geographic shift is part of a broader migration by the criminal networks.
“That’s why you’re seeing the migration of these scam compounds to central and sub-Saharan Africa, which is where we are already pre-positioned to take them off,” Patel said.