FinCEN Tells U.S. Banks to Improve Scam Reporting as Losses Approach $13 Billion

FinCEN said the operations are not the work of small groups of petty fraudsters but large, well-organized criminal machines. In 2025 alone, U.S. victims lost more than $7.2 billion, and between September 2023 and December 2025, close to $13 billion was stolen from Americans, according to the warning. The organizations are based mainly in Cambodia, Burma and Laos, where they have trafficked hundreds of thousands of people into compounds, taken their passports and forced them to run online fraud. Workers who fail to meet quotas are often beaten; some victims were freed after their families paid ransom demands, while others were coerced into commercial sex work. The centers have proven resilient to law enforcement because some are endorsed, or outright operated, by corrupt local officials, FinCEN said.

Investment fraud is by far the most common scheme, according to the agency. Scammers approach targets posing as a romantic interest or a financial adviser, and sometimes open the conversation by claiming they mistyped a phone number. After prolonged contact, they push the victim toward an "investment," typically in cryptocurrency, promising unrealistically high returns.

FinCEN described how those payments usually move: "Most digital asset payments by victims to scam center operators originate from money services businesses (MSBs) offering digital asset services, including digital asset kiosks, according to FinCEN analysis and law enforcement information. Based on FinCEN's analysis of BSA reporting, scammers often instruct their victims to open accounts with MSBs offering digital asset services to purchase specific types of digital assets. Then, the victim is told to send these funds to a digital asset address controlled by the scammers."

The fraud does not stop at the first loss. FinCEN said criminals exploit victims' distress by posing as law enforcement, financial institutions or FinCEN itself, claiming they are investigating the case or have recovered the stolen funds, and demanding a fee before the money can be returned. In other cases, fraudsters pose as investment advisers and tell victims to withdraw their money, buy gold and silver bars, and hand them to a courier for "safe keeping."

The agency published a full list of red flags alongside its warning, but said each case must be assessed on its own facts because no single red flag is "determinative of illicit or other suspicious activity." Factors to weigh include the customer's historical financial activity, whether transactions fit prevailing business practices, and whether the customer shows several related red flags at once.

Moving the proceeds is the other half of the operation. FinCEN said scam center operators rely on professional money launderers and Chinese money laundering networks, working in three stages. Payments are first extracted in digital assets through bank accounts, money mules, shell companies or fraudulent money services businesses. The funds are then laundered on-chain, with the origins obscured by rapid transfers between addresses, mixers and token swaps across blockchains. Finally, the money is integrated into the traditional financial system through money mules, stablecoin transfers to offshore exchanges and Chinese underground banking networks.