West African scam compounds raided, more than 100 suspected trafficking victims ‘rescued’
More than two dozen people were arrested by police in Ghana and Nigeria as part of a U.K.-hosted operation that also included tech companies.
Police in Ghana and Nigeria arrested or detained 28 people and identified more than 100 suspected victims of human trafficking during an international operation targeting scam compounds in West Africa, U.S. and British officials announced Tuesday.
The operation was hosted by Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) in London last week. It brought together 15 law enforcement agencies and the same number of tech companies — including Meta, Microsoft and Google — as part of what they called Joint Disruption Week.
In Ghana, authorities raided a compound in Sasaabi, a semi-rural community outside the capital, Accra, arresting 19 people and seizing 303 devices, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Nigerian authorities made nine further arrests.
The Ghanaian police also identified 117 people whom the department described as trafficking victims and said were “rescued” and now awaiting repatriation to Nigeria, alongside 89 scam victims who had lost an estimated $8.3 million.
“These networks steal savings on one side of the screen, and people’s freedom on the other,” said Matthew Floyd, a deputy assistant director in the FBI’s Criminal Division.
The Department of Justice said the technology companies it worked with removed more than 3.7 million accounts, pages and groups linked to the West African scam centres.
Meta’s Rob Cochrane gave the same figure for Facebook and Instagram alone. The department did not break the total down by company.
“The disrupted schemes included law enforcement impersonation scams, digital ‘arrest’ extortion schemes, cryptocurrency investment fraud (also known as ‘pig butchering’), and a variety of other online fraud operations targeting global victims,” stated the DOJ.
Following the police action in West Africa, officials said more than $11 million in “potentially freezable” funds had been identified, but did not say how much had been frozen or seized. The FBI’s Floyd described identifying assets as “the easy part.”
Nick Sharp, the NCA’s deputy director of fraud, said it was not yet known how many British or American victims the compounds had targeted, as forensic work on seized devices continues.
The Meta connection
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said the operation began with information from Meta, which the NCA also credited as playing “a key role in coordinating the event and encouraging broad private sector participation to maximize scam compound disruption.”
Pirro — a former Fox News host and longtime ally of President Donald Trump — said she was “very proud to work with Meta.” She credited all of the participating businesses with having “voluntarily disrupted scam infrastructure” on their platforms, adding: “And thank God for them.”
Her praise for Meta comes as the company faces scrutiny over fraud on its platforms and questions about whether the right incentives exist for the company to properly tackle such fraud.
A Reuters investigation last year, citing internal company documents, reported that Meta projected about 10% of its 2024 revenue, roughly $16 billion, would come from ads linked to scams and banned goods. Meta disputes that figure and says scams undermine the trust its advertising business depends on.
Last November, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, (D-CT) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) urged the Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Meta profited from scam advertising and whether enforcement action was warranted.
Other lawmakers have pushed for broader changes. In February, Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) introduced the bipartisan SCAM Act, which would require social media companies to take “reasonable steps” to verify advertisers and combat fraudulent ads or face action from the FTC and state attorneys general.
Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order focused on cybercrime, fraud and scam centers, emphasizing law enforcement coordination, diplomacy and victim restitution rather than imposing direct new obligations on tech platforms.
Asked by Recorded Future News whether Meta would require identity verification for all advertisers, Cochrane pointed to earlier targets for verifying high-risk advertisers.
The company said it is aiming for verified advertisers to account for 90% of its ad revenue by the end of 2026, up from 70% today, arguing that the remaining 10% would low-risk unverified businesses such as “local ice cream shops.”
Alexander Martin
is the UK Editor for Recorded Future News. He was previously a technology reporter for Sky News and a fellow at the European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative, now Virtual Routes. He can be reached securely using Signal on: AlexanderMartin.79
