INTERPOL has arrested no fewer than 5,811 suspects and intercepted more than $293 million in illicit assets during a global anti-fraud operation targeting cyber-enabled financial crimes across Nigeria and 96 other countries and territories.
The operation, codenamed Operation First Light 2026, was conducted between January 15 and April 30, 2026, bringing together law enforcement agencies worldwide to dismantle organised criminal networks involved in social engineering scams, money laundering and other forms of online financial fraud.
The coordinated crackdown followed an extensive intelligence-gathering and information-sharing phase before participating countries launched more than three months of synchronized enforcement actions against identified criminal syndicates.
Authorities carried out coordinated raids on identified premises, arrested suspects, blocked or froze bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets, issued INTERPOL Notices and Diffusions to facilitate international cooperation, and deployed INTERPOL’s Global Rapid Intervention of Payments (I-GRIP) system to swiftly halt illicit financial transfers involving both conventional currencies and virtual assets.
The operation targeted a broad range of offences, including business email compromise, romance, investment, impersonation and sextortion scams. During the exercise, investigators analysed 152,808 cases, blocked 31,014 bank accounts, solved 23,715 cases and identified 15,606 suspects linked to various cyber-enabled fraud schemes.
In a statement released on social media on Thursday, INTERPOL said the operation identified more than 142,000 victims worldwide, underscoring the growing sophistication, scale and transnational nature of social engineering scams.
According to the agency, criminal syndicates increasingly exploit trust, fear and urgency to manipulate victims into voluntarily surrendering money or confidential information, making individuals, businesses and government institutions prime targets for financial fraud.
The policing body noted that social engineering encompasses a wide range of cyber-enabled offences, including business email compromise, romance scams, investment fraud, sextortion and impersonation schemes, all of which rely on psychological manipulation rather than technical hacking.
It warned that such crimes have become one of the fastest-growing forms of transnational organised crime, with criminals leveraging digital platforms, encrypted communications and cryptocurrency to conceal their identities and launder illicit proceeds across multiple jurisdictions.
INTERPOL said participating countries also relied on its Global Rapid Intervention of Payments (I-GRIP) mechanism to rapidly freeze suspicious financial transfers before they could be withdrawn or dispersed.
The stop-payment system enabled authorities to block both fiat and cryptocurrency transactions, limiting further financial losses and significantly improving the chances of recovering stolen funds for victims.
Highlighting some of the operation’s major breakthroughs, INTERPOL disclosed that authorities in Eswatini dismantled a sophisticated criminal syndicate involved in illegal online gambling, money laundering and impersonation scams, arresting 82 suspects and seizing 240 electronic devices, foreign currencies and a replica Brazilian police station complete with fake uniforms and official signage used to deceive victims during video calls.
In Thailand, investigators uncovered a cryptocurrency-based money laundering network linked to romance scams, with one 20-year-old suspect allegedly processing more than $122.5 million through a digital wallet within just ten months using cross-chain token swaps to obscure the movement of illicit funds.
Authorities in Singapore and Oman also prevented the fraudulent transfer of $6.6 million linked to a business email compromise scheme, while police in Macao, China, rescued a victim from losing nearly $372,000 after identifying an active impersonation scam during a public anti-fraud awareness campaign.
Reacting to the successful operation, the Agency’s Director of the Financial Crime and Anti-Corruption Centre, Tomonobu Kaya, said the operation demonstrated the importance of sustained international collaboration in tackling cyber-enabled financial crimes, stressing that no country can effectively combat increasingly sophisticated fraud syndicates in isolation.
He noted that strengthening intelligence sharing, coordinated investigations and rapid financial intervention mechanisms remains essential to disrupting organised criminal networks and the money laundering systems that sustain them.