US and UK sign a first joint pact against crypto scam compounds

Prosecutors from both countries signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday at the British ambassador's residence in Washington. US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro signed alongside Stephen Parkinson, Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales, and Graeme Biggar, Director General of the National Crime Agency. The target is named in the document: transnational networks running scam compounds, including groups tied to Chinese organised crime and to human trafficking.

What the memorandum sets up

The agreement sets procedure. Investigators on both sides can run parallel investigations into the same targets, exchange intelligence on organised crime syndicates, and decide together which jurisdiction prosecutes a given case. That last item has slowed these cases for years, because a compound in Myanmar defrauding victims in Ohio and Manchester produces evidence in three legal systems at once.

“Together we will disable the Chinese TOC networks that are operating these scam compounds and depriving our citizens of their hard-earned funds, all while using human-trafficked labor to increase their profit.”

— Jeanine Pirro, US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Washington Examiner, 4 September 2026

Quote source: Washington Examiner, 4 September 2026

The numbers behind it

Two figures get cited, and they measure different things. The FBI's IC3 puts reported crypto investment fraud losses at $8.65 billion in 2025, an 89% rise from 2023. The Justice Department estimates that scam-centre schemes as a whole cost the public around $10 billion a year. The first counts what victims reported to one US agency, the second estimates the whole business, and neither counts what victims never reported.

The compounds are moving

The Scam Center Strike Force that Pirro created in November 2025 was built around Southeast Asia, where the compounds started. The map has widened since. An operation in Dubai in April this year ended with 276 arrests and at least nine centres closed, which put the model well outside the region it grew in.

The work these compounds do is old. Crypto changed the exit: money leaves through wallets rather than through banks that answer subpoenas, and the victim usually sends it themselves. Our reporting on a Hong Kong woman who lost $3.3 million to a romance operation and on the fake bank fraud team that talked a Massachusetts woman out of $56,000 shows the same script running at both ends of the size range.

The October test

A disruption event in London in early October will put investigators in a room with private companies, which in practice means exchanges, wallet providers and payment firms. Freezes and account closures come from those companies rather than from prosecutors, and that is where a memorandum turns into money that stops moving.

The agreement is the first of its kind and it is also just a signature. The measure of it arrives in October, in how many addresses go cold in the week after that London meeting.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.