US FinCEN links $12.7 billion in suspicious activity to Southeast Asian crypto investment scams

The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued an analysis and alert on Thursday linking approximately $12.7 billion in suspicious financial activity to a crypto investment scam operated by the Southeast Asia Campus. About 1300 agencies submitted 33904 suspicious activity reports, covering the period from September 2023 to December 2025. Money services companies, dominated by crypto companies, submitted 55% of the reports, involving $5.5 billion; banks submitted 41%, involving $6.4 billion; and securities institutions submitted the rest of the report to $784.5 million. The number of reports increased at an average monthly rate of 10.9%, and the amount involved increased by 18%. Scammers used at least 22 digital assets, the most common being Ethereum, USDT and USDC. On-chain analysis shows that no matter what asset victims initially purchased, funds are almost always converted into stablecoins, and almost all of them are converted into USDT, and then transferred through the DeFi protocol or exchanges outside the United States. Scammers also reuse collection addresses across multiple victims, which is how some institutions recognize this pattern. The report shows that about 25% involve older people, which is comparable to the 24.4% of the population over the age of 60, so FinCEN believes that older people are not disproportionately targeted. The FBI estimates that people over the age of 60 in the United States lost US$4.8 billion due to fraud in 2024. These parks are mainly located in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, and U.S. authorities have seized more than US$25 million in funds related to related scams this year.