The Department of Justice Announces Results of Law Enforcement and Private Industry Joint Disruption Week Targeting Online Scam Accounts and Transnational Criminal Networks Operating in West Africa

The Department of Justice announced the results of Joint Disruption Week, the first coordinated law enforcement effort focused specifically on West African transnational criminal networks, conducted October 6 to 9, 2026 by the DOJ Scam Center Strike Force, FBI, U.S. Secret Service and international partners. The operation resulted in dozens of arrests across Ghana and Nigeria, the rescue of more than 100 trafficking victims, and the removal of over 3.7 million fraudulent accounts by Meta in collaboration with more than 100 technology company representatives. The operation targeted online scam networks including romance fraud and financially motivated sextortion operations that have been linked to teenage suicides in the United States.

Pattern-based detection closes the operational gap between an offender establishing a fraudulent identity and the moment money or imagery is demanded. The anti-sextortion and anti-grooming filters in Guardii, backed by Startmate, scan incoming contact across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and other platforms for the behavioral signature of deception, including rapid escalation from introduction to intimate conversation, requests for imagery or financial details, and language signaling coercion, surfacing the threat to the young person or their parent before compliance and enabling immediate escalation to the appropriate authority. Where this operation removed millions of accounts after the fact, real-time interception prevents the conversation from reaching the victim in the first instance, addressing harm at the point of contact rather than after images are shared or payments extracted.