The US-UK scam center agreement signed Sept. 3 sets up coordinated investigations by American and British law-enforcement agencies pursuing overlapping fraud cases. It is a memorandum of understanding, not an announced takedown: its practical promise is to align investigations, information sharing and decisions about where a case should be brought.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro signed for the U.S. Scam Center Strike Force. Crown Prosecutor for England and Wales Stephen Parkinson and National Crime Agency Director General Graeme Biggar signed for their respective UK bodies, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The signing took place at an event hosted at the residence of the UK ambassador to the United States.
What does the US-UK scam center agreement do?
Under the memorandum, the partners will conduct parallel investigations into common targets and share information concerning organized-crime syndicates, the Justice Department said. They will also discuss which jurisdictions should handle particular cases of shared interest and prioritize related matters in pursuit of mutual results.
That is the useful, unglamorous machinery of cross-border enforcement. The agreement does not identify a particular compound, suspect or prosecution. DOJ said the agencies had already found significant overlap among cases and had committed to an in-person disruption event in London in early October with private-industry partners. The National Crime Agency is to host that event.
DOJ described the arrangement as the first international cooperation agreement of its kind focused on disabling scam centers involved in cryptocurrency and cyber-enabled investment fraud, among other schemes. That is the department's characterization, rather than an independently tested measure of the pact's effectiveness.
Who is the task force targeting?
The Scam Center Strike Force was launched in November 2025, according to DOJ. The department says it focuses on Chinese organized-crime syndicates operating scam centers primarily in Southeast Asia and targets cryptocurrency investment fraud, other cyber-enabled fraud, human trafficking and money laundering.
The Record has reported that many of the centers are based in Southeast Asia and that trafficking victims are housed in compounds across Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and other countries. DOJ officials have alleged that Chinese organized-crime networks operate these compounds and use human-trafficked labor.
On the U.S. side, DOJ says the strike force includes the FBI, Secret Service, Justice Department Criminal Division, Postal Inspection Service, IRS Criminal Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations in Washington, along with several U.S. attorney's offices. Treasury and State also work with the effort, the department said.
Why are authorities focusing on investment scams?
The reported losses are large, although they are not a complete census of the crime. DOJ, citing FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center data, said cyber-enabled fraud accounted for almost 85% of losses reported to the center in 2025. Reported losses from cryptocurrency investment-fraud schemes rose from $4.57 billion in 2023 to $8.65 billion in 2025, an 89% increase, DOJ said.
Those figures depend on victims filing reports and likely undercount the harm, the department said. The new memorandum is meant to give investigators on both sides of the Atlantic a shared route for pursuing the organizations DOJ says sit behind those schemes.
This story draws on original reporting from The Record.
