U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro unveiled a broad offensive Friday against Southeast Asian cyberscam operations, labeling it a "new theater of war" in the Trump administration's campaign against Chinese transnational organized crime. The initiative, spearheaded by the newly formed Scam Center Strike Force, includes Treasury Department sanctions against a prominent Cambodian lawmaker and 28 other individuals and entities accused of running fraudulent schemes from Cambodia. Criminal charges were also filed against two Chinese nationals linked to a similar operation in Myanmar.
Pirro, speaking from Washington in a virtual press conference with journalists in Asia, detailed a coordinated effort that includes a warrant to seize and dismantle a major recruitment channel on the Telegram messaging app. The crackdown also involves freezing hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit assets, she said.
Cyber-enabled scams have surged across Southeast Asia, particularly in Cambodia and Myanmar, where illegal enterprises have generated massive profits by defrauding victims worldwide, according to United Nations experts and analysts. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that Americans lost nearly $21 billion to such crimes in 2025 alone. These operations are often intertwined with human trafficking, as foreign nationals are lured with fake job offers and then forced to run romance and cryptocurrency scams under near-slavery conditions.
The Scam Center Strike Force brings together Pirro's office, the Justice Department's Criminal Division, the FBI, and the U.S. Secret Service. The most high-profile target is Kok An, a Cambodian senator and businessman whom the Treasury Department labeled a "scam center kingpin." The Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions blocking Kok An's U.S. assets and prohibiting American entities from doing business with him and his associates, who are accused of defrauding U.S. citizens of millions of dollars.
The Associated Press was unable to reach Kok An or his representatives for comment. Chea Thyrith, a spokesperson for the Cambodian Senate, noted that Kok An holds parliamentary immunity as an elected senator and deferred to U.S. authorities for details on the sanctions. Kok An is at least the second Cambodian senator to face U.S. sanctions; in 2024, Washington targeted tycoon Ly Yong Phat over similar allegations of forced labor and human trafficking tied to online scams.
Pirro said the latest operation was triggered in November when FBI agents in Thailand accessed evidence from an abandoned scam center in Myanmar, recovering over 8,000 phones and 1,500 computers. That evidence led to wire fraud conspiracy charges against two Chinese nationals, Huang Xing Shan and Jiang Wen Jie, who had managed the compound before attempting to relocate to Cambodia. They are currently held by Thai authorities on immigration violations, and the U.S. is seeking their extradition.
In a related development, Cambodian lawmakers unanimously passed a new law in March targeting online scams with penalties of up to life in prison, following a government pledge to shut down such centers by the end of April. However, in January, Cambodia extradited another alleged scam kingpin, Chen Zhi, founder of Prince Holding Group, to China despite U.S. efforts to take custody after his indictment last year for running a massive fraud operation.
The crackdown underscores the administration's focus on transnational crime as a national security priority. Pirro emphasized that the strike force will continue to pursue these networks aggressively, leveraging international cooperation and financial tools to disrupt their operations.
