Justice Department arrests 28 alleged scammers in Africa
DOJ says it worked with international law enforcement and private companies.
You've gotten these text messages -- a remarkable investment opportunity or someone representing themselves as a loved one or friend desperately needing money or a law enforcement officer saying you missed a court appearance or jury duty telling you to pay a fine to avoid arrests.
You're skeptical, but the person who sent the message seems to know enough about you to overcome your doubt.
The sender is often a scammer, trying to get you to bite.
The Justice Department announced Tuesday it had arrested 28 individuals in Nigeria and Ghana allegedly responsible for scamming hundreds of Americans.
"These criminal operations are increasingly sophisticated, organized and linked to human trafficking," Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., told reporters on a call on Tuesday. "The losses from these cyber-enabled scams continue to rise sharply, with billions stolen annually. Law enforcement and the private sector have been and must continue to work together because criminals exploit global platforms and borders."
She said they used "real-time intelligence" with other international law enforcement and private industry partners to make the arrests.
According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), investment scams were reported 72,984 times in 2025, with cryptocurrency investment fraud comprising 72% of them. Reported losses from these scams rose from $3.96 billion in 2023 to $5.8 billion in 2024. Reported losses for cryptocurrency investment scams rose 24% in 2025 to more $7.2 billion, according to IC3’s 2025 annual report.
Those figures are based largely on victim reports and are believed to significantly underrepresent actual losses as many victims do not report them to law enforcement.
A conservative estimate of the annual value of funds stolen by scam syndicates approached $64 billion as of the end of 2023, the report said.
The disrupted schemes announced Tuesday included law enforcement impersonation scams, digital “arrest” extortion schemes, cryptocurrency investment fraud and a variety of other online fraud operations, the DOJ said.
Rob Cochran, the director of intelligence, safety, and signals for Meta, said on the call it had taken down 3.7 million accounts, pages and groups on Instagram and Facebook tied to scammers.
In Ghana, DOJ said 19 people people were arrested and 303 electronic devices were seized in a scam that victimized 89 people out of $8.3 million. It also reported that authorities identified 117 victims of human trafficking that are pending repatriation to Nigeria.
The methods the alleged scammers used offered fake employment opportunities to trick victims, to scammers impersonating the military and romance scams that target primarily elderly victims, according to the FBI.
Pirro called it a "crescendo of crime" that occurs with these scammers and the profits they allegedly make.
The Justice Department says it froze $11 million in assets of the alleged scammers and potentially saved the lives of those victims who were allegedly human trafficked by the scam groups.