Abstract:
The United States and the United Kingdom are strengthening cooperation in an attempt to crack down on transnational fraud networks that steal huge amounts of money through investment fraud and "hog killing".
The judicial departments of the two countries have signed a memorandum of understanding to plan to conduct parallel investigations on relevant organized crime groups, share intelligence, and coordinate case handling to improve the efficiency of combating fraud zones.
This memorandum was signed on September 3. US prosecutor Jeanne Ferris Pirro met with senior officials from the UK's National Crime Agency and the Crown Prosecution Service to sign documents. Pirro said the two countries' goal is to "dismantle" the Chinese criminal groups that run these fraud parks. The memorandum also stated that the two sides will discuss which jurisdictions are suitable for handling specific cases of common concern and prioritize cases that can achieve common results.
The U.S. Department of Justice stated that the United States and the United Kingdom have discovered a number of important overlapping cases and have pledged to cooperate with private companies to participate in an offline crackdown hosted by the British National Crime Agency in London in early October. This cooperation is led by the US "Fraud Center Strike Force", which was established in November last year and is responsible for coordinating US law enforcement agencies to respond to online fraud.
The FBI stated that losses caused by online fraud accounted for approximately 85% of all loss reports received by the agency. Last year alone, Americans lost more than $12 billion to online fraud. However, because many victims do not report the crime, the actual damage may be much higher than this figure.
These scams are primarily perpetrated by victims of human trafficking. They are imprisoned in fraud parks in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and other countries, and conduct investment fraud, love fraud and other activities under the control of criminal groups. The report pointed out that these parks are usually operated by Chinese criminal groups and assisted by some local officials.
The U.S. Fraud Center Strike Force is led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Seifert. She told Congress in March that the agency has more than 150 personnel, including prosecutors and law enforcement officers from the FBI, IRS and U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
One of the agency's most important actions to date was the crackdown on the Prince Group, a Chinese shell company accused of laundering money. Relevant U.S. and British agencies have imposed sanctions on the group, and the U.S. Department of Justice has also seized Bitcoin worth about $15 billion related to its CEO Chen Zhi. The U.S. Department of Justice said the assets were related to proceeds from the fraud.
This cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom shows that the two sides are trying to expand the anti-fraud complex from a single-country law enforcement operation to a transnational coordinated operation. Since fraud groups often carry out personnel control, fund transfer and technical operations across multiple countries, it is often difficult to completely cut off their network by investigation or seizure in one country alone.
However, the memorandum currently mainly determines the direction of cooperation, and specific actions still need to be implemented through follow-up investigations and law enforcement actions. Whether the United States and the United Kingdom can effectively coordinate case jurisdiction, intelligence sharing, and asset recovery will directly affect the actual results of this cooperation.
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