A joint takedown operation by the social networking giant Meta and law enforcement authorities from multiple countries has deactivated over 150,000 scam accounts and arrested 21 suspects.
Joint Disruption Week took place across Thailand and involved authorities from ten countries, including the Royal Thai Police (RTP), the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US Department of Justice’s Scam Center Strike Force, and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).
The first leg of Joint Disruption Week took place in December 2025, when 59,000 scam accounts, pages, and groups were taken down and six arrest warrants were issued.
Meta shuts 150,000 scam accounts involved in online fraud
Meta shut down over 150,000 scam accounts on Facebook and Instagram linked to Southeast Asian fraud networks targeting people across the world.
Operating out of Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand, the scam accounts lure their victims into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency and investment scams, stealing billions of dollars in the process. Pig butchering, a form of romantic investment scam, costs victims about $63.9 billion a year.
“These networks now target ordinary people — families, friends and neighbours — and operate across borders with enormous impact,” warned Lt Gen Jirabhop Bhuridej, Thailand’s Assistant National Police Chief and Deputy Director of the Police Cyber Task Force.
The operation also revealed that over 300 Thai nationals were trafficked to work at the scam centers along the Thai border. The victims usually work in slave-like and deplorable conditions, enduring various forms of abuse and exploitation, especially after failing to meet their quotas.
The victims are usually recruited through fake job ads, and their passports are confiscated upon arrival. They are also trapped by debt, often owing their traffickers air tickets, visa processing fees, and accommodation.
While they primarily targeted victims across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Asia and the Pacific regions, the scam centers now operate in multiple languages to reach more victims worldwide. They also have adopted a sophisticated business model to avoid detection, becoming what law enforcement describes as “full-scale criminal businesses.”
“These operations cause real harm — they upend lives, destroy trust, and are deliberately designed to avoid detection and disruption,” Meta stated.
According to Chris Sonderby, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Meta, information sharing and coordination could facilitate dismantling the scam centers. During the operation, Meta acted on real-time intelligence from the law enforcement authorities.
Similarly, Lt Gen Bhuridej reiterated that the operation sends a clear message that authorities would continue to pursue transnational cybercrime “in all its forms” to keep the region safe.
Meanwhile, other Southeast Asian countries are taking action against scam centers. In July 2025, Cambodia shut down 80% of the 250 scam centers believed to be participating in online fraud. Over 10,000 victims of trafficking from 23 countries were also freed, while others voluntarily returned home.
However, new scam centers continuously emerge as old ones are dismantled, and the ruling elite’s involvement in online fraud makes it even more challenging to eradicate the vice.
“The shutdown of 150,000 accounts is a testament to the scale of modern fraud operations, but it also reveals a sobering reality: we are no longer fighting lone actors, but highly automated scam engines,” said Reinhard Hochrieser, SVP of Product and Technology at Jumio.
“As bad actors can now deploy sophisticated impersonation networks in minutes, organizations must fight back in a similar manner with AI to keep pace,” advised Hochrieser. “A layered defense requires a holistic identity intelligence solution—one that pairs government-issued IDs with biometric liveness detection to ensure the person is physically present. By combining these with real-time risk signals from devices and behaviors, and leveraging a global identity network, organizations can identify fraud patterns before damage occurs rather than treating each incident as an isolated attack. These measures create the barrier that AI-generated fraud simply cannot bypass.”
Meta releases safety tools to protect users from online scams
Meta has released new safety tools to protect users from online scams. They include alerts for suspicious friend requests and notifications about fraudulent attempts to link a foreign device to users’ WhatsApp accounts.
The new set of safety tools will also expose potential scam accounts, for example, when the user purports to operate in a different country than the one specified on their profile.
Other tell-tale signs of scam accounts include friend requests from Facebook profiles with no mutual friends or from recently created accounts.
Similarly, unsolicited job offers on Messenger, often without clear descriptions, skills, or roles, or opportunities to make large sums of money, could also signal scam accounts. Subsequently, Meta introduced a new safety tool on Messenger that allows users to submit such offers for AI review.
