Meta-backed crackdown disables more than 150,000 scam-center accounts

Meta says a major international disruption effort has led to the takedown of more than 150,000 accounts linked to criminal scam-center networks in Southeast Asia, framing the operation as one of its biggest recent anti-scam actions. In a March announcement, Meta said the enforcement surge involved its investigators working alongside the Royal Thai Police, the FBI, the US Department of Justice’s Scam Center Strike Force, and other law enforcement partners.

Meta says the operation targeted industrialized scam networks

According to Meta, the scam centers targeted people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and countries across Asia and the Pacific region. The company said the networks were tied to large-scale fraud operations, including romance scams, investment and cryptocurrency scams, fake job offers, and other impersonation schemes designed to move victims onto private messaging channels and steal money.

Meta said that, based on intelligence shared by law enforcement, it disabled more than 150,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts that were involved in or supporting the scam-center networks. The company also said Thailand’s Royal Thai Police Anti-Cyber Scam Center arrested 21 people as part of the broader operation.

This was Meta’s second joint enforcement surge since December

The company described the March action as its second joint disruption week since December 2025. Meta said the earlier operation resulted in the removal of roughly 59,000 accounts tied to similar scam-center activity, which means the latest crackdown was significantly larger. The company is using that comparison to argue that joint enforcement work with governments and peer companies is becoming more aggressive and more coordinated.

Meta also said the latest effort involved support from agencies in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. That matters because scam-center networks based in countries such as Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar often operate across borders, use trafficked labor, and target victims globally rather than within one market.

Meta is pairing the crackdown with new anti-scam tools

The company tied the enforcement action to a broader anti-scam push across its apps. In a separate March 2026 post, Meta said it recently introduced new warnings for suspicious friend requests on Facebook, stronger scam alerts in Messenger, and device-linking warnings on WhatsApp to make it harder for fraudsters to hijack accounts or pressure users into unsafe actions.

Meta also used the announcement to highlight the scale of the wider problem on its platforms. The company said it removed more than 159 million scam ads in 2025 and took down 10.9 million Facebook and Instagram accounts associated with criminal scam centers during the year.

Meta’s figures show how large a role major social platforms still play in both the spread and disruption of scam-center fraud. The company is using the 150,000-account takedown to argue that coordinated action between platforms and law-enforcement agencies can disrupt these networks at scale, even as the broader fight against organized online scams continues.