Law enforcement authorities across 34 countries banded together in a six-month investigation that culminated in the arrest of 3,500 alleged cybercriminals and the seizure of $300 million in illicit assets, Interpol announced Tuesday.
Conducted from July through December, “Operation Haechi IV” focused on e-commerce fraud, investment fraud, money laundering tied to illegal online gambling and business email compromise fraud, as well as voice phishing, romance scams and online sextortion.
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The transcontinental police investigation was spearheaded by South Korean authorities and spanned the U.S., the U.K., United Arab Emirates, Japan, Singapore, Australia, India, Argentina, Sweden, Poland and Romania, among other countries. Investigators uncovered evidence of fraud and then used I-GRIP, Interpol’s stop-payment mechanism, to freeze 82,112 related bank accounts. They seized a total of $199 million in currency and virtual assets, such as NFTs, that are collectively worth $101 million.
“The seizure of $300 million represents a staggering sum and clearly illustrates the incentive behind today’s explosive growth of transnational organized crime,” said Stephen Kavanagh, Interpol’s executive director of police services, in a prepared statement.
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“This vast accumulation of unlawful wealth is a serious threat to global security and weakens the economic stability of nations worldwide.”
As a theme, the Haechi investigation frames fraudulent activity as an old crime enabled by souped-up new tools. NFT scams — in which platforms and social media accounts come online, then vanish once transactions go through — are cut from the same cloth as con jobs that use fake office numbers, business cards and P.O. boxes. Now, artificial intelligence has become a fast-growing weapon among scammers, especially deep fakes that can convincingly imitate loved ones.
U.K. investigators reported several cases in which AI-generated content was used to defraud or victimize people, particularly through impersonation, online sexual blackmail and investment fraud.
The advancement of such technology seems to be raising the stakes and energizing criminals. Last year’s Haechi III, which took place from June to November 2022, reported just 975 arrests and froze $130 million. The current Haechi IV shows a 260 percent jump in arrests and the seizure of more than double the unlawful assets.