Over the course of a six-month worldwide police investigation known as HAECHI-IV, approximately 3,500 people have been arrested and $300 million worth of assets have been seized from 34 different nations.
Targeting a variety of financial crimes, including voice phishing, romance scams, online extortion, investment fraud, money laundering connected to illicit online gambling, business email compromise fraud, and e-commerce fraud, the exercise ran from July to December 2023.
To further prevent access to illicit proceeds, authorities also frozen related bank and virtual asset service provider (VASP) accounts. Authorities seized $199 million in tangible currency and $101 million in digital assets in total, blocking 82,112 suspicious bank accounts.
“After a two-year manhunt by Korea’s National Police Agency, cooperation between Filipino and Korean authorities resulted in the arrest in Manila of a high-profile online gambling criminal,” the international police organisation Interpol said.
The agency said it discovered a new scam in South Korea that involved the sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with promises of huge returns, only for the operators to stage a rug pull and abruptly abandon the project. Investment fraud, business email compromise, and e-commerce fraud accounted for 75% of the cases.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and deepfake technology to increase the legitimacy of scams was another innovative trend. This allowed criminals to pose as individuals who the targets knew, trick, con, threaten, and extort victims through investment fraud, online sexual blackmail, and impersonation scams.
HAECHI-IV was released more than a year after HAECHI-III, which resulted in the seizure of virtual assets valued at $130 million as part of a global campaign against money laundering and financial crimes enabled by cyberspace.
“The seizure of $300 million represents a staggering sum and clearly illustrates the incentive behind today’s explosive growth of transnational organised crime,” Stephen Kavanagh of Interpol said. “This vast accumulation of unlawful wealth is a serious threat to global security and weakens the economic stability of nations worldwide.”