FinCEN Brings Financial Institutions Together to Combat Overseas Scam Centres

The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) hosted a public-private information-sharing event on November 9, 2026, to strengthen efforts against the financial networks supporting overseas scam centres.

The FinCEN Exchange brought together representatives from financial institutions, digital-asset businesses, law enforcement agencies, and government partners. The discussions focused on how transnational scam operations move illicit funds and how stronger cooperation can help identify and disrupt the networks behind them.

According to FinCEN, overseas scam centres facilitate large-scale fraud targeting victims in the United States and other countries. These operations may also involve human trafficking, forced labour, and complex money laundering arrangements designed to conceal and move criminal proceeds.

The event follows FinCEN’s September 2026 alert on money laundering associated with digital-asset investment scam centres. The alert describes how criminal organisations use professional money launderers, money mules, shell companies, digital-asset transfers, and online marketplaces to move funds obtained from victims.

FinCEN’s analysis also highlighted the scale of the threat. Reported U.S. victim losses from digital-asset investment scams increased from US$907 million in 2021 to US$7.2 billion in 2025, according to FBI Internet Crime Complaint Centre data cited in the alert.

The November exchange supports Executive Order 14390, which calls for stronger protection against cybercrime, fraud, and predatory schemes. FinCEN said it would continue encouraging information sharing between public and private sector partners to help identify emerging threats and disrupt transnational criminal organisations.

FinCEN Exchange is a voluntary public-private partnership established in 2017 and given an explicit statutory basis under the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020.

Implications for compliance teams

Financial institutions should review FinCEN’s overseas scam-centre alert and financial trend analysis to understand the associated risks and suspicious activity indicators. Compliance teams should pay particular attention to unusual digital-asset transfers, money-mule activity, shell-company accounts, rapid movement of funds, and transactions involving high-risk counterparties.

The development also reinforces the value of timely information sharing and collaboration with relevant authorities and industry partners. Identifying individual suspicious transactions is important, but understanding the wider networks connecting victims, intermediaries, and money launderers can help institutions detect activity that might otherwise go unnoticed.