FinCEN has tied roughly $12.7 billion in suspicious financial activity to crypto investment scams run from Southeast Asian compounds, based on a review of 33,904 filings covering September 2023 through December 2025. The bureau found scammers funnel proceeds into stablecoins, almost exclusively USDT, and found that older Americans are not disproportionately targeted despite common assumptions.
The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has tied roughly $12.7 billion in suspicious financial activity to crypto investment scams run out of Southeast Asian compounds, in an analysis and alert published Thursday. About 1,300 institutions filed the 33,904 reports that make up the review, covering September 2023 to December 2025.
Filings accelerate as reported sums climb
Filings grew by an average of 10.9% a month and reported sums by 18%, climbing from 590 reports worth $485.7 million in October 2023 to 2,482 worth $833.5 million in December 2025. Money services businesses, mostly crypto firms, filed 55% of the reports and flagged $5.5 billion, while banks filed 41% and flagged $6.4 billion; securities firms filed the rest, worth $784.5 million.
Stablecoins carry the proceeds
Scammers used at least 22 different digital assets, most often Ethereum, USDT and USDC. But blockchain analysis showed proceeds were nearly always swapped into stablecoins, almost exclusively USDT, then pushed through DeFi protocols or exchanges outside the US. Scammers also reused collection addresses across multiple victims at once, a pattern that helped some firms spot the fraud.
Crypto Briefing, citing the same FinCEN report, said the schemes are no longer confined to Southeast Asia: FinCEN flagged expansion into South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Victim profile defies assumptions
Elder exploitation appeared in about 25% of reports, against the 24.4% share of the population aged 60 and over, leading FinCEN to conclude older adults are neither disproportionately victimized nor disproportionately robbed. Victims spanned all 50 states, financing losses from retirement accounts, home equity lines, second mortgages and personal loans; one woman sent nearly $640,000 from her retirement fund, and another lost more than $1 million over six months.
The FBI counted $4.8 billion in fraud losses among Americans over 60 in 2024, a figure senators cited in introducing the GUARD Act, a bill to fund blockchain tracing for local police.
Compounds draw an international response
Scam compounds sit mostly in Cambodia, Laos and Burma, staffed by people the United Nations numbers in the hundreds of thousands, many trafficked there through fake job adverts. Interpol member countries approved a resolution designating the network a transnational criminal threat at its General Assembly in Marrakech this week. US authorities have seized more than $25 million tied to such schemes this year. Since 2015, FinCEN's Rapid Response Program has interdicted $1.8 billion and recovered just over $1 billion for 5,790 American victims.
Sources: FinCEN, Crypto Briefing
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