More than 3.7 million fraudulent accounts, pages and groups vanished from major tech and financial platforms last week as part of a coordinated international crackdown that also sent Ghanaian and Nigerian security forces storming scam compounds in West Africa, arresting dozens of suspects and rescuing well over 100 human trafficking victims.
The operation, dubbed Joint Disruption Week, was announced by the U.S. Department of Justice, which said private technology and financial companies — including Meta, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Coinbase and Binance — voluntarily removed the accounts while identifying more than $11 million in potential freezable funds tied to scam networks operating out of West Africa. Private industry partners also shared leads on more than 30 suspected scam centers with international law enforcement during the push, according to the agency.
Raids Hit Ghana Compound, Free Trafficking Victims
The most dramatic enforcement action unfolded in Sasaabi, a suburb of Accra, Ghana, where Ghanaian and Nigerian security forces arrested 19 suspects and seized 303 electronic devices, according to the Department of Justice. A parallel raid in Nigeria led to nine more arrests and the seizure of 53 devices. The Ghana operation was led by the Ghana Cyber Security Authority, Ghana Police Service and National Security Service working alongside the FBI and the UK National Crime Agency, per the same agency's account.
Inside the Sasaabi compound, Ghanaian authorities identified and rescued 117 human trafficking victims who were awaiting repatriation to Nigeria, as reported by The Record. Investigators also identified 89 scam victims who lost an estimated $8.3 million. The outlet notes that scam compounds operating in West Africa often combine forced labor trafficking of young workers with cross-border cyber fraud, a pattern that has become increasingly common across the region.
London Summit Brought Tech and Law Enforcement Together
The groundwork for the raids was laid during an operational summit held from October 6 to October 9 at the UK National Crime Agency's headquarters in London, which drew more than 100 officials from 15 law enforcement agencies and 15 tech companies, according to the National Crime Agency. The agency said the gathering marked the fourth joint operational disruption initiative of its kind, and the first hosted by the NCA focused specifically on African fraud networks.
On the U.S. side, the Justice Department carried out the operation through the Criminal Division's Cyber-Enabled Scam Initiative and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia's Scam Center Strike Force. The D.C. prosecutors' office partnered with the UK Crown Prosecution Service to handle parallel cases on both sides of the Atlantic, the department said.
Scale of Losses Driving the Crackdown
The push comes against a backdrop of soaring cybercrime losses nationwide. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported total U.S. cybercrime losses of nearly $21 billion across roughly 1 million complaints in 2025, with cryptocurrency investment fraud climbing 24 percent year-over-year to $7.2 billion — a category the bureau says, along with pig-butchering schemes, accounts for the largest share of reported financial damage nationally.
Government impersonation scams have also surged. Federal Trade Commission data for 2025 showed consumer imposter scams caused $3.5 billion in reported losses, with government impersonation schemes specifically rising 40 percent to $920 million, as previously reported by Hoodline. Imposter scams have remained the FTC's most frequently reported consumer fraud category for nine straight years.
Part of a Broader Federal Push Against Overseas Scam Hubs
Joint Disruption Week follows an August presidential memorandum that established a framework for private firms to help with government-directed cyber operations, a directive Hoodline covered in August. A separate March 2026 executive order established a joint DOJ-DHS operational cell and called for diplomatic engagement and possible sanctions, among related measures, to counter foreign cyber fraud networks. Federal prosecutors have already pursued related cases tied to West African fraud rings, including a $100 million romance and business email compromise ring run from Ghana that Hoodline detailed earlier this year.
In September, South African police extradited six Nigerian nationals tied to the Black Axe criminal syndicate to the United States to face federal wire fraud and money laundering charges, accused of stealing $6 million from more than 100 American romance scam victims, according to The Guardian. Interpol identifies Black Axe as a global driver of cyber-enabled romance and investment fraud. That case followed Interpol's Operation Red Card 2.0, which ran across 16 African nations from December 2025 to January 2026 and resulted in more than 650 arrests and $4.3 million recovered from schemes linked to $45 million in global losses, per Modern Ghana.
Officials involved in Joint Disruption Week have framed it as evidence that West African scam hubs have evolved far beyond the lone-wolf “Yahoo Boys” romance schemes of years past, growing into structured compounds that combine forced trafficking labor with digital impersonation and cryptocurrency fraud. By pairing the physical raids in Sasaabi with the sweeping digital account removals across platforms like Meta, Google and Coinbase, authorities are attempting to choke off both the human infrastructure and the online channels that have driven tens of billions of dollars in global losses. It remains unclear how many of the 3.7 million removed accounts can be kept offline before new profiles emerge to replace them, how quickly the 117 rescued trafficking victims will be repatriated, or how much of the $11 million in identified funds will ultimately make its way back to victims.
