The FinCEN crypto scam alert issued Sept. 3 tells financial institutions to watch for and report suspicious activity connected to overseas digital-asset investment scam centers. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network paired the alert with an analysis of 33,904 Bank Secrecy Act reports filed from Sept. 8, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2025.
Those filings identified about $12.7 billion in financial activity associated with suspected digital-asset investment scams, according to FinCEN. That is not a verified tally of money stolen from victims. It is a suspicious-activity measure that can include attempted or unpaid transactions, transfers between accounts, repeated or amended reports, and data-entry errors. The reports are counted by filing date, so some underlying conduct may have happened before the review period.
That distinction is doing real work. Suspicious Activity Reports help investigators map possible fraud and laundering networks, but they are not audited loss reports or a clean ledger of completed theft.
What does FinCEN want banks to report?
FinCEN asked financial institutions to detect, prevent and report suspicious activity tied to these scam centers and the laundering of related proceeds. For related Suspicious Activity Reports, it requested that filers reference the alert in field 2 and in the narrative, include the term FIN-2026-SCAMCENTERS, select “Fraud-Other” in field 34(z), and enter “Scam Centers” in the description field.
The agency also encouraged voluntary information sharing under Section 314(b) of the USA PATRIOT Act. That provision permits participating institutions to share information about possible money laundering or terrorist activity while receiving specified liability safe-harbor protections, according to FinCEN.
FinCEN’s analysis found that reports of suspected activity rose by an average 10.9% each month during the review period, while total funds reported rose 18% monthly on average. Money services businesses, mainly firms tied to the digital-asset sector, and depository institutions submitted 96% of the reports examined.
How do these investment scams work?
FinCEN describes them as confidence schemes built around fake identities and social engineering. Contact may begin with an unsolicited text, a purported wrong-number message, social-media outreach, a dating site, or a messaging app. The operator builds trust as a prospective romantic partner, friend, or business contact, then directs the target to a purported digital-asset investment.
FinCEN says transnational criminal organizations, predominantly based in Southeast Asia, operate many of the centers. The agency says their supporting infrastructure can include illicit online-service marketplaces, professional money launderers, shell companies, money mules, and stablecoin transfers to exchanges outside the United States.
People of all ages were targeted across all 50 states and several U.S. territories, FinCEN said. About 25% of the relevant reports involved elder financial exploitation, close to older adults’ 24.4% share of the 2020 Census population. Recognizing the social-engineering setup early is part of the problem, though cybersecurity awareness training is not proof that someone will make the right call in a live scam.
FinCEN advises people who believe they have been targeted by cyber-enabled fraud to contact their financial institution immediately and file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center or the nearest U.S. Secret Service field office.
This story draws on original reporting from The Record.
