Financial institutions are urged to be vigilant against digital asset investment scams perpetrated by overseas scam centers in a recent alert from Treasury’s financial crimes enforcement arm.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in a release Thursday, pointed to a rising rate of suspected scam activity reported on Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) reports filed between Sept. 8, 2023, and Dec. 31, 2025, totaling about $12.7 billion in financial activity tied to suspected digital asset investment scams.
It said such scams – also known as “pig butchering,” “romance baiting,” or “cryptocurrency confidence schemes” – are suspected to have targeted individuals of all ages and across all 50 states and several U.S. territories, according to BSA reports.
“Analysis of BSA reporting indicated use of a variety of well-known fraud tactics. Illicit actors often used assumed names or identities to pose as potential romantic partners, new friends, or new business partners to target scam victims,” FinCEN said. “Scammers often created websites and mobile applications that imitated legitimate investment services to carry out their criminal activity.”
FinCEN’s alert to financial institutions – FIN-2026-Alert005 – details how digital investment scams work and how proceeds are laundered and introduced into the traditional financial system, and it provides a list of red-flag indicators of potential spam activity for banks.
The network asks that financial institutions filing suspicious activity reports (SARs) on such activity reference the alert itself in SAR field 2 and the narrative by including the key term “FIN-2026-SCAMCENTERS” and selecting “Fraud-Other” under SAR field 34(z) with the description “Scam Centers” in the text box.
Alert: FIN-2026-Alert005
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