For too long, Washington has treated online scams as a consumer protection problem of victims, disputed transactions, and after-the-fact remedies. That frame is too small. The scam epidemic is a national security and law enforcement challenge driven by transnational criminal organizations, permissive foreign environments, illicit financial networks, trafficked labor, and digital infrastructure that lets criminals reach Americans at scale.
The Trump administration has moved in the right direction by focusing on the source: identifying networks, disrupting tools, freezing money, sanctioning enablers, and supporting arrests and prosecutions. As Unleash Prosperity Now argues in a recent report, that approach should be expanded and made permanent.
The urgency is underscored by the latest data. The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) shows losses reported to the center surpassed $20 billion for the first time. The FTC reported that in 2025 nearly 30% of people who lost money to a scam said it started on social media, with reported losses reaching $2.1 billion, up some 800% from 2020.
Importantly, understanding that scams are not the same as fraud is important when combating these criminals. Fraud typically involves unauthorized access to an account, credential, device, or payment instrument. The criminal steals directly. Scams are different: the criminal manipulates the victim into authorizing payment by manufacturing trust, fear, urgency, affection, or opportunity. The victim thinks they are helping a relative, moving money to safety, paying a bill, buying goods, or investing wisely.
That distinction matters because it shows where policy must intervene. A scam rarely begins at payment. It begins upstream on a social media platform, messaging apps, dating sites, fraudulent websites, spoofed calls, text messages, or fake investment portals, often weeks before money moves. By the time a victim hits send, the criminal has long groomed the target and subtly directed the victim toward a controlled payment path. Sadly, but not surprisingly, a large percentage of victims are senior citizens.
The engine of this financially devastating epidemic isn’t individual fraudsters stealing identities. It is a network of industrial scam compounds across Southeast Asia and across the world, often staffed by trafficked workers held through debt bondage and violence, “fattening” victims with affection or false investment tips before draining their accounts. These are organized transnational enterprises stealing, by one indictment’s account, $30 million a day at their peak.
Recognizing how these crimes are committed and from where they originate leads to a natural course of action: go upstream.
In its first year, the Trump administration designated foreign cartels and criminal organizations as terrorist entities, unlocking sanctions and forfeiture tools built for exactly this kind of threat. Treasury cut off the financial plumbing of the scam economy, naming Cambodia’s Huione Group — through which more than $4 billion in illicit funds had flowed — a primary money-laundering concern. The Justice Department indicted the chairman of the Prince Group and moved to seize roughly $15 billion in Bitcoin, the largest forfeiture action in its history. And a dedicated interagency Scam Center Strike Force has already seized more than $400 million in cryptocurrency, with funds earmarked for return to victims.
The successes of the last year prove that when the government is focused on stopping these crimes at their source, good things happen for the American people. The United States should keep using sanctions, visa restrictions, financial access restrictions, law enforcement cooperation, and diplomatic pressure against scam compounds and their protectors. Cooperative governments should get intelligence and technical help. Governments that let criminal networks operate openly should face escalating costs.
TRUMP IS RIGHT TO TARGET FRAUD CARTELS. HERE’S WHAT SHOULD COME NEXT
To protect Americans and bring this new international “mafia” to heel, we must keep the pressure on. Make the Strike Force permanent and give it the resources to move quickly. Bring the financial sector in as a partner, with real-time intelligence sharing and clear channels for cooperation. And meet the next wave of scam tactics head on, from AI voice clones and deepfakes to investment pitches that show up casually in a Facebook feed.
The Trump administration has put important tools on the table. The task now is to use them relentlessly and make clear there will be no safe harbor online, offshore, or in the financial system for those who build businesses around stealing from Americans.
Stephen Moore is a Washington, D.C.-based economist and co-founder of Unleash Prosperity Now.