In May–July 2026, the FBI under Director Kash Patel announced the results of a large-scale intercontinental operation codenamed “Operation Blackout.” According to official Bureau data, over roughly 16 months of work, $15.2 billion was seized, including a U.S. record of 127,000 bitcoins. Hundreds of suspects were arrested across several continents, around 8,000 internet terminals were disabled, and thousands of people forcibly held in “scam compounds” — industrial centres of fraud — were freed. At the same time, losses of more than 10,000 Americans totalling over $500 million were prevented.
At first glance this looks like an American story. It is one of the clearest examples of how transnational organised crime built on human trafficking and cryptocurrency fraud has long since become a European problem.
“Scam compounds” are not call centres in the ordinary sense. They are fortified complexes with barbed wire, watchtowers and armed guards, where hundreds or thousands of people work 12–16 hours a day. Their task is to build “relationships” in messengers and on dating sites and then extract money from victims under the guise of lucrative cryptocurrency investments. The scheme is known as “pig butchering.” The sites are controlled by armed groups such as the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA). Inside the compounds a regime of terror reigns: failure to meet daily fraud quotas, attempts to escape or contact relatives are punished with brutal torture, electric shocks, isolation in “dark rooms” and sale to other compounds.
According to estimates by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, up to 100,000 people may be held in such centres in Cambodia and around 120,000 in Myanmar. Many arrived after answering advertisements for high-paying jobs and found themselves in bondage once their documents were confiscated.
The main operators are Chinese criminal syndicates. One of the largest structures was the Prince Holding Group and its founder Chen Zhi, also known as Vincent. Masking itself as a legitimate real estate and banking business in Cambodia, Prince Holding Group provided the scam compounds with logistics, security, political cover and infrastructure for laundering billions of dollars of criminal capital through cryptocurrency mixers, cross-chain bridges and luxury real estate. According to U.S. prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, however, in the shadows it controlled at least ten scam compounds. In October 2025 the U.S. Department of Justice charged Chen Zhi with conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering and simultaneously filed a forfeiture action against 127,271 bitcoins worth approximately $15 billion at the time of seizure — the largest forfeiture in the history of American justice.
In May 2026 the FBI stated that within “Operation Blackout,” including the “Zephyr Exodus” operation against the Prince Group, significant progress had been made on the case. Parallel actions were carried out in Dubai under “Operation Sand Dollar,” as well as in Thailand and Myanmar.
The socio-political uniqueness of Operation Blackout also lay in the unprecedented involvement of the private technology sector. The physical dismantling of the compounds would have been impossible without the so-called “digital blackout.” At the FBI’s request, SpaceX used precisely coordinated geolocation and instantly disabled around 8,000 satellite terminals in areas of Myanmar controlled by the junta and the DKBA. In a single moment the scam factories were cut off from high-speed internet, while Meta, Google, Apple and the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase blocked related services and wallets. As FBI Director Kash Patel noted, plunging the criminals’ digital empire into darkness became possible only through direct cooperation between state security services and technology giants. The initial information vacuum surrounding the operation in mainstream media was dictated by secrecy considerations, to prevent the transfer of cryptocurrency reserves to untraceable cold wallets.
Despite the enormous success of Operation Blackout, experts warn that the transnational criminal hydra is already adapting to the new conditions. The dismantling of complexes in Southeast Asia is pushing the syndicates to relocate infrastructure to regions of West and East Africa, as well as isolated zones of Latin America. In addition, the mass raids triggered a major humanitarian crisis: thousands of freed forced labourers found themselves without documents or means of subsistence in active combat zones, requiring immediate intervention by UN bodies.
Europeans have long been within the strike zone of these criminal networks. According to data from the International Organization for Migration and research conducted in Myanmar, EU citizens make up a noticeable share of the victims. Criminals are increasingly targeting speakers of German, French, Spanish and Portuguese, using automatic translation systems. There is also a harsher side. Documented cases exist in which Europeans — French, Germans, Italians, Spaniards — were lured to Thailand under the pretext of work and then transferred to compounds in Cambodia or Myanmar, where they were forced to scam their fellow countrymen.
The European Union responded. On 31 July 2026 the EU Council announced restrictive measures against seven individuals and three entities in Cambodia and Myanmar, a direct continuation of earlier American and British sanctions from 2025. Among those placed under European sanctions were the Prince Holding Group and Chen Zhi; the grounds were human trafficking, torture, cruel treatment and fraud on a scale of billions of dollars.
For Europe this story has several dimensions. The first is the need to protect citizens. Online fraud is taking more money each year from elderly people and those seeking relationships online. The second is human trafficking. Geopolitics also plays a significant role: the compounds exist thanks to corruption and the weakness of host states, while Chinese criminal groups use these territories as safe havens. Finally, there are cryptocurrencies and money laundering, through which billions extracted from Europe pass through complex schemes and return to the legal economy.
FBI Director Kash Patel repeatedly emphasised that the results of Operation Blackout received almost no coverage. “Almost complete media blackout,” he said, playing on the name of the operation. Indeed, despite the scale of the figures — $15.2 billion, thousands freed, hundreds arrested — the topic long remained on the periphery of the European agenda. This creates a paradox: on the one hand the United States demonstrates the ability to deliver heavy blows to the infrastructure of transnational crime, even enlisting private companies; on the other, Europe, whose citizens are also becoming victims, still reacts more with sanctions than with joint operational action.
It must be acknowledged that the operation did not solve the problem completely, because criminal networks adapt by relocating capacity to other countries, changing languages and schemes. But Operation Blackout showed that a systemic approach — from seizing cryptocurrency and cutting communications to freeing hostages — is possible. For Europe the question now is whether it will remain a passive observer of American operations or begin to build its own strategy involving closer cooperation between Europol and the FBI, tough sanctions, victim protection and pressure on states that allow these “fraud factories” to exist.