LIVE: Federal Officials Announce Charges Against Africa-Based Scammers Linked to China

Cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency. All right. This is Karen Seifert. She does all this stuff. All right. Here we go. Where are the girls? Girls. All right. We're here today. Good morning. We're here today to warn the public about a highly sophisticated and increasingly common form of cryptocurrency investment fraud. Now, you've heard me talk about cryptocurrency for a while now. Created the first scam center strike force in the nation. We are one year old and the president has made this a priority and we are following through on the president's directive that we do everything we can to protect Americans from the cryptocurrency fraud that is occurring around the country. But it is more than just occurring in the United States. It is a global epidemic. The fraud that is being created, whether it's in Southeast Asia or in the new areas that I'll talk about today, is encircling the globe. So today I want to talk about the dating websites where people are targeted, as well as the social apps that use fake romantic relationships, NFT investment pitches, and malicious websites to seize control and drain victims of their cryptocurrency wallets without their consent. So here's how it works. The scammer creates a profile of attractive women on dating sites. They initiate contact, they build a relationship, and then they actually get them to invest in an NFT or any kind of special crypto opportunity. The conversation to the target feels very personal. The scammer shares details about her life. She sends photos and critically, she sends short videos as well as audio clips that she's created to follow through on the scams. Now, these are not entirely generated by AI. The operations are now hiring real people and they record themselves and message the victims. the clips are repeatedly used from one target to another so one worker one of these women can simultaneously manage chats with many victims at one time the videos raise the level of trust it feels very personal and it makes the fraud far more convincing to the victim Now, once the victim's engaged, the scammer directs the victim to a website that appears to be a legitimate, maybe NFT marketplace or investment platform. The victim is told to connect or link their cryptocurrency wallet. That single action grants the fraudster broad permission over the wallet. Once connected, the scammer then transfers the assets without any consent by the victim. The money is gone, and then the scammer's money laundering operation on the blockchain makes the recovery extremely difficult. Now, in the press release, and hopefully you all have, you will see examples, and I'm not going to read them to you, of actual text messages that are used in these schemes. These are text messages that convince American targets that they are involved in a relationship with a woman that they think they can trust and then invest their money and ultimately lose their money. These cases devastate the victims financially and they devastate them emotionally because the victim feels that not only have they lost everything, but they feel ashamed. Sometimes they don't want to report it. And then they lose a sense of security that they're not in control of their own life. They have lost what they think was a genuine connection. The operations behind them, as you already know from what I've told you in the past, are organized, scalable, and profitable. Now, my office is working with the FBI, the United States Secret Service, and our federal and local partners, like Michael Heyman from Alaska, who is with us today, and we're thrilled to have him here, who's helping us uncover and prosecute these cases. Now, today we have charged six defendants. There they are over there. And we have not only charged them, but our embassy has delivered to Madagascar our official request to extradite. You see the six over here. Shukuk Wah is the leader of that organization. We have obtained material witness warrants for 15 individuals who are employees of Wah, who claim that they themselves were human trafficked and abused by Wah. And we believe that they're now being held in jail in Madagascar. Let me be clear. We need real partners. and we're calling on the Malagasy government to give us the witnesses to give us the evidence and to give us the defendants so what's next the criminal groups that i've been talking to you about are evolving it's not just southeast asian anymore we're now including africa india and Eastern Europe. They are often backed, though, continually by Chinese transnational organizations making as much as $40 billion a year. They are now, because they know we're onto them, breaking into smaller compounds and harder to detect by us. They're using AI tools. But we're evolving, too. We've expanded the strike force globally, deepening partnerships with our allies, and we're using every tool available to follow the money and bring these scammers to justice. Now, in the last year, in response to the threat and with the support of President Trump, who has made and has the foresight to make this a priority for the administration, we put together the first of its kind initiative. We restrained over now $1 billion in cryptocurrency. We have seized over 700 fraudulent crypto investment websites. We have seized Starlink terminals. We've seized Telegram channels. And we have also seized tens of thousands of devices used in these scam centers. Now, together with Meta, the most fraud accounts in history are offline. And just this past week, 17.4 million were identified and offloaded in one week. We couldn't do this without our private partners. And in addition to the partners you've heard about in the past, OpenAI has now signed on to collaborate with our Scam Center Strikeforce. We're starting a national consumer awareness program and a campaign researched and guided by the National Ad Council. And in closing, I just want to be direct with you. Never connect your cryptocurrency wallet to a website recommended by someone that you met online. Be extremely cautious of anyone who wants to move a conversation from wherever you meet them to an encrypted app like WhatsApp or Signal. And short videos and voice messages do not prove that someone is real or legitimate. They are being prerecorded and they are being reused. In fact, if you think they're your girlfriend, you're in big trouble because they're cheating on you with about 100 other victims, all right? So if an investment opportunity seems too exclusive and too urgent and too good to be true, you know it is. Finally, never, never link your wallet to an unsolicited link from a new romantic contact. And it doesn't matter if you're in your 20s or 30s or if it's your parents in their 70s who've lost a spouse. Report suspected fraud to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center or the IC3.gov. And we're going to keep fighting these people, and you're not going to use Americans as inventory. We're here to fight the crime. And I also want to mention I'm the first United States attorney to bring together other U.S. attorneys to jointly partner on our cases. And today, I'd like to invite my partner, Michael Heyman, the U.S. attorney for the District of Alaska, who has worked with us on this Madagascar case. Where are you, Michael? Thank you, Judge Pirro. And good morning, everyone. My name is Michael Heyman. I'm the United States attorney for the District of Alaska. I'm really grateful to be here to mark what is the anniversary of the first Scam Center Strike Force and recognize the tremendous accomplishments that they've made in just one year, particularly with respect to the international cryptocurrency scams that are occurring throughout the world, as well as protecting American citizens from these sophisticated criminal organizations that are operating overseas. As mentioned, the charges today that were brought involved this cryptocurrency scam out of Madagascar and Judge Pirro described how the scheme operated. I'd now like to take a few minutes to describe the extraordinary work and talking about how this scam was uncovered. Now keep in mind Madagascar is an island nation in the South Indian Ocean. It's off the southeast coast of Africa and in August of this year the FBI personnel from the Honolulu field office joined by an assistant United States attorney from my office traveled to Madagascar at the request of local authorities. There, they assisted in the forensic examination of 3,200 electronic devices. I want to repeat that. That's 3,200 phones, computers, and other electronic devices that they downloaded and extracted the data from on the spot. They brought an exceptional team of highly sophisticated investigators to do this, And they did this at 13 different suspected scam compounds in Madagascar. Now, keep in mind, as far as I'm aware, the extraction at this level, the number of devices, 13 different locations in all less than 10 days has never been done before. This is truly an extraordinary investigative feat that they accomplished in Madagascar. Having an assistant United States attorney from my office also gave them the ability to be dynamic on the ground, and with cooperation from the U.S. Embassy and the FBI Legal Attaché's Office, helped make the investigation a success. From these efforts, investigators identified individuals allegedly responsible for conducting and managing this operation and identified approximately 800 U.S. victims that fell prey to this scam, 800. And while we have seen romance scams before, the one thing that is particularly troubling in this case is the level of premeditation and calculation that went into these scammers' thoughts. In an internal document seized pursuant to a search warrant, one of the scammers in his own words shamelessly and callously said that he called this a quote-unquote emotional scam, as if it was a matter of fact. Investigators have already identified losses of approximately a half million dollars, and we expect that number to grow substantially. Last year, Alaska residents reported, and I emphasize reported, losses of approximately $19 million in cryptocurrency scam-related frauds. Now, I want to emphasize that those are local numbers in Alaska. The national numbers are exponentially large, but this demonstrates how criminal organizations can emerge thousands of miles away and target Americans at home, including our remote state of Alaska. No one is immune. I also want to emphasize that this fraud is not just about financial losses. Behind every fraudulent transaction is a real person whose trust was deliberately exploited. Judge Pirro has assembled a unique team of exceptional law enforcement throughout the country. And our operation is clear. Operating a fraud scheme from overseas, even from an island community in the South Indian Ocean, does not place those who target American citizens outside the reach of United States law enforcement. We will continue working with our domestic and international partners to aggressively uncover the evidence about these frauds and hold all of those scammers accountable. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Thank you. All right. And next, I'd like to bring U.S. Secret Service Special Agent-in-Charge Tara McLeese to the podium. Secret Service, just so you know, also has the technical expertise in cryptocurrency crime. They have been laboring hard over the last year to get us to that $1 billion mark in cryptocurrency restraint. And I'm glad to have them as a founding partner in the strike force. Tara? Thank you, ma'am. Good morning. Over the past year, the Secret Service has worked tirelessly alongside our law enforcement partners across the country and around the world to disrupt scam centers and identify the criminals responsible. Our experts have spent thousands of hours meticulously tracing illicit proceeds as they are laundered through virtual wallets. I'm proud to stand here today and announce that through the Scam Center Strike Force, the Secret Service has led the effort to identify and restrain over $1 billion in stolen funds. Every dollar seized is a reminder of the vast criminal networks that prey on Americans. These cyber criminals can steal a family's financial security, drain a college savings account, or wipe out a retirement fund with a single tap on a phone. When our agencies launched this initiative one year ago, much of the criminal activity was concentrated in Southeast Asia. Dozens of successful investigations have disrupted these networks and forced criminals to seek new footholds. As similar scam centers emerge across Africa, our teams are expanding their efforts to identify, pursue, and dismantle these operations across the continent. One of the most disturbing cases we have encountered involves a prolific sextortionist in South Africa. Our investigation has linked a single suspect to at least 54 victims around the world, including a juvenile who took their own life. The Secret Service and our partners here at the U.S. Attorney's Office worked with the South African Police Service, who obtained and executed an arrest warrant. That suspect now faces a life sentence. We also have arrested three members of a ring that supplied scammers with phishing kits designed to bypass Microsoft Outlook security protections, giving criminals a pathway into Americans' personal and business email accounts. In partnership with the Nigerian Police Force, we are working to identify a team of criminals who trick victims into transferring cryptocurrency to wallet addresses that closely resembled their intended recipients, a new practice known as address poisoning. We are also closing in on global scamming operations in West Africa. These criminals impersonate legitimate cryptocurrency exchanges in an effort to steal passwords and victimize people in the United States and the United Kingdom. Education is every bit as important as enforcement. Be skeptical of emails and social media messages, particularly when someone asks for personal information or offers an investment opportunity. Scammers don't need to know you to target you. They only need you to respond. The Secret Service has been investigating financial crimes for 166 years. Our agents and investigative analysts remain the best in the business at bringing those who defraud the American people to justice. We have offices, agents, and partnerships around the world, and just like our protective mission, we operate 24-7 to get the job done. These scammers may relocate, but there is nowhere on earth they can hide from us. I want to thank the members of our team who have poured so much effort into each and every one of these investigations, our law enforcement partners from around the world, and the many private sector partners who are dedicated to this effort. I would also like to recognize the Treasury Department's Executive Office of Asset Forfeiture, or TEOF, an exceptional component of the Treasury Department, whose unsung heroes work tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure that the funds recovered through these operations are returned to the victims and reinvested in efforts that serve and protect the American taxpayer. And finally, Judge Pirro, thank you for your vision that brought this team together. Your leadership has helped us turn the tide in the fight. Thank you. And finally, I'd like to bring FBI Assistant Director Heath Yankee to the podium to discuss further the work we've done together on the strike force. Thank you, Judge. I'm Heath Yankee, the Assistant Director for the FBI's Criminal Division, and I want to thank our partners who I stand here with today. I want to highlight the exceptional partnership with the U.S. Attorney's Office under the leadership of U.S. Attorney Pirro, whose efforts in coordinating and prosecuting these efforts, we could not thank enough. I also want to thank U.S. Attorney Heyman for his partnership in Alaska. And we're equally grateful to our partners at the U.S. Secret Service, whose leadership and investigative capabilities have strengthened this multi-agency effort. Let me be clear. Fleecing of Americans out of their life savings by these transnational criminal organizations must be stopped. We combat this threat through partnerships, by working side-by-side with our domestic and international law enforcement partners, by supporting our prosecutors who are dedicated to holding these criminals accountable in a courtroom, and by collaborating closely with our private sector partners to disrupt and deny these criminal actors the ability to operate. This is how we protect the American people. Operation Blackout is the FBI's global demolition campaign to dismantle the foreign scam compounds. It's built on three pillars. Prevent the harm from happening, disrupt all their operations, and dismantle these criminal organizations. And with our partners, I think the statistics speak for themselves. Nearly $17 billion seized, hundreds of alleged scam workers arrested, 10,000 Americans warned before losing their money, 77% of them didn't even know they were being scammed. and $670 million were prevented from going to these criminal organizations. Under Operation Blackout, we're not just investigating the criminal enterprises, we're dismantling their networks, we're disrupting their finances, we're rescuing victims, and we're holding those responsible accountable. In May and again in October of this year, the FBI and the Scam Center Strike Force brought together international law enforcement, government, and private industry partners to strengthen our collective efforts against these scam center networks operating overseas. When investigators and private industry share a room, the results are unmistakable. Assets are frozen, accounts are shuttered, and victims are identified. My message to our citizens who we work for every day, pause before responding to that unsolicited message or clicking on a link in the email. These scammers use pressure tactics trying to get you to respond before you have time to assess who's actually behind the keyboard. For those that have been scammed, please report your incident to the FBI at our Internet Crimes Complaint Center at IC3.gov. My message to our partners here today and for those around the world, thank you, but we're just getting started. And finally, my message to the fraudsters. Preying upon Americans will not be tolerated. there is no safe haven and we will hold you accountable justice will find you thank you as you heard we're all at work it is changing it is evolving and our job is to change and evolve with it all right a question or two that's relevant is there an extradition uh treaty with madagascar you know that's a great question there is not but what we are able to do is apparently Madagascar is signed on with the United Nations, we're signed on with the United Nations, and there is an opportunity to get them through the United Nations Treaty. But there is not a separate treaty with Madagascar. Police said, we want to get the money back to the people who lost it. We seized a billion dollars. Has any money gone back to these people who have lost it, and if not, why? the the the procedure is extremely complicated uh i've got right here to my best people where do you want to talk about what happens you've got to restrain the money we've got to forfeit the money we have to find the victims we have to allocate the money you want to add something sure go this guy really loves numbers so to answer your question most of our cases are in various stages of litigation we don't have much of that one billion dollars to victims yet but it's in process. So once we litigate our case, and once we obtain a final order granting the property to the government, then it's up to the attorney general to decide which victims get what money. And so our office provides a memo, and along with law enforcement, we provide memos, and then it's up to the attorney general and the money laundering, narcotics, and forfeiture section at Main Justice. And so they have multiple cases right now that they're working on, but it just takes a few months to work through. Can you describe how we go from getting the money to restraining the money, to forfeiting the money, to notifying the victims? Yeah, so, I mean, when our agents, who, by the way, deserve all the credit for this, we could not have done this without them, and they work 24 hours a day and honestly it's a litigation So once they find the cryptocurrency or find a good case to investigate, they'll send it to us, and the attorneys will review, we'll work on either a warrant or some sort of service of process, and we'll work with private entities like crypto exchanges or whatever private sector we work with. And then once we can work through that, then we'll file a civil lawsuit. And so the civil lawsuits, you may have seen some of ours, some of them are 60 pages, some of them are 120 pages. It contains a lot of information. And so it takes a long time to write that on top of everything else we're doing in these cases. And then it takes a long time to litigate Because in some cases, we're seeing that some of the alleged perpetrators are filing into the case, so we have to litigate against them. And the litigation itself, in some cases, takes a year. Sometimes it takes two years. In some cases, we don't have perpetrators filing in. And in those cases, we can just file for a default motion. And then once the court grants it, then we can then work on the process to send money back to victims. and that process itself can take anywhere from four months to six months because of all of the notifications we have to send to victims and all the extra research we have to do to identify victims and then also we have to verify that those victims are entitled for what money they claim or what money we think they should get and then when we work with victims and we work with investigators and then when we work with the attorney general's office and main justice at some point we'll get through it and then we can give money to victims. I told you he was really smart. Yeah, actually, Michael, you want to talk about some of the victims? Where's that, where's the list that we have? Do we know? We know they're Americans. Do you know, Karen? Yeah, I think we have victims identified, at least 74 victims that we've identified. If you look in the press release, we have the states that they were from. That's just an initial take and that is based on what the agents did by looking at which wallets were like being pulled out of via this scheme, right? So it's a little bit sophisticated to be able to pull that money directly out of the wallet. As the investigation continues, we're going to be able to contact all of those victims and get to a larger set of victims. But we have identified 74 by state at this point and those are listed in in the press release ranging in age yep i think you know with the dating site as i think judge was uh alluding to earlier you have a lot of different um age ranges that are going on the dating site meeting women who look like this who might be um in their age range right so that's a little bit no the older guys want the younger ones in their age range it could be both various dating it could be absolutely yeah and match.com the match group has worked with us in the past in trying to provide us with information about scams on their websites practically speaking what should people look for when they get approached by somebody who looks like this you know she's i mean come into your DMs here's the thing if they come into your DMs and you want to you want i'm not going to say what it's basically you want to you want to you want to enjoy a night or two or a couple of weeks or a couple months have at it but don't you dare link up or go on other than the website you met them don't link up to anything encrypted don't give them the opportunity to sell you on anything as it relates to cryptocurrency NFTs or anything else that's when they get you and then they don't need your permission anymore you link up you hit that everybody mentioned hit that button michael mentioned it tara mentioned it who else mentioned it yonki mentioned it what else can i ask about the no i would ask about the FBI case that's on against the two uh former FBI employees it's unsettling now, the superseding indictment, or superseding, rather, the complaint, they've objected to that, said that it's, you know, it's not signed, it was not permitted to be filed, you can't add charges without permission from the judge, without permission from... Well, yeah, that's something that we saw this morning, it was scheduled for a preliminary hearing, it's up to Judge Faruqi as to whether or not he wants to sign that. Look, we've got a prior complaint that was signed by another magistrate and or another judge I should say and we have the ability today to add a charge if the judge doesn't want to add the charge that's up to the judge about the timing on that I mean it was right up against you know why did it take so long for this to sort of that to come out uh why did it you mean because of the date of the crime versus the date that we finally filed a complaint well it takes a great deal of investigation it's like finding a needle in a haystack all right there's a lot that has to be reviewed and looked at i mean these are long-term investigations and uh you know i think that the case and the complaint on the affidavit speaks for itself no i don't have any comment on Comey so i'm like let me ask you about a burger of the weekend it was a 16 year old that was killed yeah it's sad and i don't know if you had any update on that the dmpd was looking for another teenager maybe it's maybe a sibling uh i know that you uh have spoken before about uh youth violence in this in this town this is another add-on and maybe next time i come down to talk about anything i'll bring in my chart again every one of the kids who are shot with firearms weapons guns whatever you want to call them uh under the age of 20 are all african american we are losing a generation of teens in the district every one of the homicides whether the victim is three years old, seven year old, 10 years old, 19 year old uh they're they're it is a whole generation that we're losing i'm not going to comment at this point yet about who you know the who we're going to be charging but it is a very sad case another another teenager shot with the gun you shouldn't have died you didn't have to die and the MPD i give them credit they are closing more and more cases and giving us the ability to at least and we go forward working with them on these warrants uh to get the individuals who are responsible can i ask you about the DC jail yeah i don't know that much about the jail uh in terms of it's more civil than it is criminal uh so there isn't a lot that i can comment on without briefing myself specific question is that there was a murder in the jail two days ago chief yesterday said that he was working with your office to file charges yes do you know anything about that yeah but i'm not ready to talk about it i mean you know it's like the 19 year old you know we've got to wait till we get the evidence and we're ready to talk you know there are problems in the district and we continue to to aggressively confront them and believe me when we get the evidence we'll prosecute and you'll hear me ask you another separate question um last may there was a shooting involving the secret service in which they killed a man named nasir best who came at them with a firearm and opened fire on the agents there was a bystander that was also shot but survived Your office has been investigating this since May do you know where that investigation stands I know the case uh and it's not unusual I have found in this district uh to take six months because we want to make sure we get as much information and as much evidence as we can into a grand jury i'm not saying that it's in the grand jury because i can't do that you know it but that is not unusual for this district i'm from new york it's crazy in New York but not in D.C. Okay that's enough. You want to talk to Michael? Yes. Go. Yeah I just want to ask you about the Dan Sullivan situation. How that investigation is going. It's going to be a short conversation. Yes. And then just about the litigation that's been filed by DOJ. What do you anticipate happening in that case and how what is the Justice Department prepared to take further action if the case ends up you know if this ends up Yeah, a couple of quick things is, A, I'm actually recused from any discussion regarding this case. And even if I wasn't, that's not something I could speak to. C. All right, everybody. Thank you. Did everybody get a coin from the press? I don't want to talk about anyone.