Meta, in one of the largest coordinated takedowns of online scam networks, has disabled more than 150,000 accounts across its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, linked to criminal scam centres operating out of Southeast Asia. The social media giant also says that its crackdown has helped put 21 people behind bars.The company announced that the action was the result of a week-long joint operation in Bangkok involving Meta, the Royal Thai Police Anti-Cyber Scam Center (ACSC), the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the US Department of Justice Scam Center Strike Force, alongside law enforcement agencies from more than a dozen countries. “These operations cause real harm — they upend lives, destroy trust, and are deliberately designed to avoid detection and disruption. The work to protect people against scammers is never done, and requires ongoing collaboration with partners across the tech industry and law enforcement to ensure a safer experience for everyone online,” the company said.It marks the second such coordinated crackdown since a pilot operation in December, and represents a significant escalation in the global effort to combat industrialised online fraud.

What these scam networks were doing

Meta says that the accounts removed were connected to large-scale scam centre operations primarily based in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. These are described as full-scale criminal businesses, complete with staffing structures, scripts, quotas, and systems specifically designed to evade detection. Their targets span multiple continents, with victims identified across the US, the UK, and countries throughout Asia and the Pacific.The company says that throughout the week, partners shared intelligence in real time, allowing investigators to reveal the full picture of criminal networks operating across borders. Based on the intelligence shared during the operation, Meta’s investigators identified and disabled over 150,000 accounts associated with scam centre activity.Meta says that the scale of this operation dwarfs the December pilot which resulted in the removal of 59,000 accounts, Pages, and Groups from Meta’s platforms and led to six arrest warrants. Meta described the December pilot as proving “a powerful and replicable model for partnering with law enforcement to enforce against organised online crime.”