FBI Reports $17 Billion Scam-Center Tally as West Africa Raids Net 28 Arrests

The FBI said on Oct. 13, 2026, that its Operation Blackout campaign against overseas scam centers had seized roughly $17 billion in “assets and crypto,” as the Justice Department detailed a coordinated crackdown in West Africa.

The latest enforcement effort produced 28 arrests in Ghana and Nigeria during the week beginning Oct. 6, according to a DOJ announcement. Participating companies reported removing more than 3.7 million accounts, pages and groups targeting people in the U.S., UK and elsewhere. The disrupted schemes included cryptocurrency investment fraud, law-enforcement impersonation and extortion.

The effort combined raids with real-time intelligence sharing and action against the online accounts used to reach victims. Private-sector partners also identified more than $11 million in **potentially freezable funds**, DOJ said—a recovery lead, rather than money already seized or returned to victims.

In its official X post, the FBI credited the broader Blackout campaign with hundreds of arrests of alleged scammers, thousands of trafficked workers freed and coordination among more than 20 countries. It also reported more than 10,000 Americans warned and an estimated $670 million in losses prevented.

What the $17 Billion Covers

The $17 billion is a campaign tally, not the proceeds of the latest West Africa raids. FBI Director Kash Patel had already reported the same approximate seizure total on Sept. 29. The bureau’s Oct. 13 post does not specify the period covered or break out cryptocurrency from other assets.

Earlier crypto actions help explain the scale of the campaign without establishing that breakdown. In a July 27 opinion article for Fox News, Patel included the Prince Holding Group case in his account of the FBI’s global scam-center operations. DOJ said on Oct. 14, 2025 that approximately 127,271 bitcoin, valued at about $15 billion at that time, were in U.S. government custody in that case.

A separate, narrower tally comes from DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force. On Feb. 26, prosecutors reported more than $580 million in cryptocurrency freezes and seizures over three months, a development previously covered by The Defiant. Those figures cannot simply be added to the FBI’s total without an accounting of overlapping cases.

International Partners, Local Authority

DOJ said the latest disruption week was hosted by the UK’s National Crime Agency in London. Participants included the FBI, Secret Service, Treasury and Homeland Security Investigations, alongside authorities from Ghana, Nigeria, Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand, and Interpol. Binance, Coinbase, Chainalysis, Elliptic and TRM Labs were among the private-sector participants.

Who commands the raids has become a point of contention. In an Oct. 8 statement, Ghana’s Cyber Security Authority rejected any portrayal of its Blackout operation, also called Operation Cyber Hunt, as independently conceived or commanded by the FBI. It credited the FBI and NCA with valuable intelligence contributions but said Ghanaian institutions planned and executed the operation.

DOJ’s Oct. 13 account likewise identified Ghanaian agencies as leading the Ghana operation, with support from the NCA, FBI and Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. It said 117 trafficking victims identified in Sasaabi were awaiting repatriation to Nigeria.